


Rise From Ash

by Mikkeneko



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Apocalypse, Avenger Loki, Canon-Typical Violence, End of the World, FrostIron - Freeform, Gen, Genocide, Implied/Referenced Torture, It Gets Worse, Loki Needs a Hug, Loki is cracking up, Loki is not a hero, M/M, Manipulative Loki, Mental Instability, Post-Thor, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Psychological Torture, Psychological Trauma, Save Scumming, Time Loop, Time Travel, Unhealthy Relationships, downer ending, that escalated quickly, this is gonna hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-02
Updated: 2013-11-02
Packaged: 2017-12-15 06:19:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 98,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikkeneko/pseuds/Mikkeneko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Or:</i>
  <br/>
  <b>Five Times Loki Didn't Save the World (And One Time He Did)</b>
</p><p> </p><p>When Loki's world falls apart around him, he learns that sometimes you do get a second chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The End

**Author's Note:**

> There is Tony/Loki in this fic, but it's not really the purpose of the fic. If you don't like Tony/Loki, you can mostly skip over the pairing sections. If you DO like Tony/Loki, I'm sorry to say there won't be any sexy scenes in this fic. 
> 
> A few tags that will come into play in later chapters have been omitted here in the interests of not giving things away before their time; they will be added as the story continues.
> 
> This fic was written for a prompt over on Avengerskink, "Loki is a time traveller from a Bad Future come back to Set Right What Once Went Wrong."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki falls, and lands somewhere he didn't expect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed the chapter numbers have changed. After some thought, I decided that this section of Chapter 1 didn't really fit the rest of it (and Chapter 1 was already ridiculously long as it was,) so I decided to split it off. Adding a prologue gave some balance and symmetry to the fic, I think.

Loki falls.

It's a long, long descent, long enough that the primal terror of falling itself begins to pall. Terror, Loki has time to realize, is an illusion, a prediction of the mind of pain to come - but if there is no end to the fall, there is nothing to fear but the endlessness itself.

The bright vision of Asgard, framed against the background of stars and nebulae above, has long since flickered and faded from his vision, and yet there is no ground below to be found, no rocks on which he can dash himself to drive all sense from his head as it has fled from the universe around him. He falls, and falls, and yet there is nowhere he is falling _to -_  just... away. Away from light, from life, from anything.

 _No, Loki._  Those two words burrowed down into his chest like termites, eating channels in his heart and nerves until he was hollow, weak and brittle. He let his hand slip from the haft of the spear because he could not bear it, because he wanted it to  _end,_  why will it not  _end?_

He comes to realize that it was unwise, perhaps, to choose this method to end his life. He wanted to be free of heartache, of guilt, of this hollow nothingness in his chest that eats up all his heart and his lungs until he can no longer breathe, but by slipping away into this void he has given himself far too much time to dwell on it.

He should not have sent the Destroyer after Thor, Loki decides. That was his mistake. He should have left his brother to the mortals in peace; if he had not sent the Destroyer, Thor would have had no opportunity to display his idiot courage, and the hammer would never have returned to him along with all that followed. (And that is the  _only_  reason he regrets it, Loki is sure; not that he is sorry to have hurt his brother, surely not.)

He was so close, he thinks, so  _close_  to the completion of his glorious plans. Just one more hour alone with the bifrost and it would have been complete; then he could go to Odin and say,  _see how clever I am, that I won your war without a drop of blood being spilled; see how loyal I am, that I would kill even my own kin-father for you - all for you._

 _No, Loki._ And with just two words Loki understood that he was  _wrong,_  that he will always  _be_  wrong, that there's no going back - ever. He would always know just what he is, just what he's capable of, and he'd see it every time he passes a mirror - every time he sees himself in their eyes. He would hear it hissing under every word, every breath: _monster._

Do monsters strive, Loki suddenly wonders, as men do? Do they have monster-peers who judge their performance in pillage and murder, monster-parents whose approval they seek by laying prizes at their feet? Do monsters realize their own evil and worthlessness and strive to overcome it, or do they know nothing but the primal purity of their own monstrous urges, no past or future but only the base satisfaction of the  _now?_

If they do, then Loki almost wishes he could become such a monster, forget all the regret and anticipation of pain and live in blissful ignorance. That he cannot, that he can still not loose himself of the fetters of expectation and resentment and lost hopes and guilt and bitter, bitter disappointment, means that he is neither monster  _nor_  man; he is nothing, then, at all.

* * *

How long he falls - hours, days, years - he does not know; but in time the grief and pain and rage that Loki feels is too much to be contained only with himself. It boils out to spill on those around him, calling ghostly images from his mind of the parade of those who had betrayed him (the loved ones he had betrayed.)

How  _dare_  Odin look at him so, after all Loki had done, after all Loki had  _sacrificed_  for him, only him? How  _dare_  Frigga shrink away from his embrace as though he were some filthy creature from the swamp, she who had always claimed to _love_  him, she who of all people should have been on his  _side?_  How  _dare_  Thor act like he was some sort of  _hero,_  some sort of bigger man, he who had sworn to 'kill them all' all throughout his childhood and yet a week ago still thought _nothing_  of murdering any man, giant or mortal who stood in his way?

Those mortals! Loki saw only glimpses of them from his seat on Hlidskjalf, the golden throne from which the king of Asgard watches over all the universe; he'd gotten little more of a sense of them on his one unofficial sojourn to Midgard. But he calls them out one by one to his mind, to brood over them and craft dreams of rage and vengeance. The dark-haired man in the oh-so-tidy suit, who had the hubris to imprison a God. The white-haired grandfather who'd taken Thor out of there and, of course, promptly went and got him drunk, with little idea of what disaster he courted in a drunk and rowdy God of Thunder. The whining child with the dark-rimmed glasses framing her face. And, of course, the  _seidkona_  herself who had bewitched Thor, and caused him to forget his home and family and all the truths he'd grown up with, who had broken him into putty and remolded him into but a caricature of what he'd once been: her name alone did he retain, Jane Foster, Jane,  _Jane._

How had she done it? She must have enchanted Thor somehow, woven spells about him of a foreign witchcraft that Loki had not been able to see. The magic of Midgard has grown drastically away from its counterparts in the other Realms; Loki had been able to sense it while he was there, humming in the walls and foundations of their homes, growling in the engines of their carriages, but he had not been able to recognize it. How do they do it?

Midgard itself has changed much since he'd last been there. He recalls the tiny little town seated on the wide, unforgiving desert plain: their buildings all of sharp corners and hard edges, their roads burning black under the sun and reeking of chemicals, strange tubes and wires running above and below the houses to ferry in water and air and magic. He sees again the bright, cold white lighting of the military base, lights shining veiled through the flimsy walls of plastic and wire they thought to guard their fortress -

Abruptly he feels the change around him, the endless fall that suddenly shifts in direction and speed, the sudden roiling jolt as he passes from one state to another. He had not noticed the lack of wind, sharp and tearing and whipping about his face and hands, until it returns to him. No more is he drifting, he is  _falling._

What he sees before him now, some would call darkness - but Loki knows true darkness now and there is no comparison. The stars spill their light against the terrain below, giving faint hints of definition to rocky crags, uneven horizons. The wind roars in his ears with increasing violence, and Loki realizes with a sudden jolt of panic that he really  _is_  falling now, and there will be a hard and unforgiving landing at the bottom.

He fumbles for his  _seidh,_  his hands and tongue numb from their long disuse, sluggish to come to his aid. It is harder than he would have liked to stir the tendrils of power to bind into his will, when he is free-falling through the atmosphere towards a target veiled in shadows with not a point of familiarity anywhere to ease his disoriented brain. At the last minute he manages it, gasping out an incantation which unfurls about his body like ghostly wings, beating back against the dreadful plunge and slowing his descent.

Not a moment too soon; he had underestimated the speed of his fall, and overestimated the margin of safety. He still feels the crust of stone shatter beneath him, hears the report that would have brought anyone within miles to investigate. But he is of Asgard and no mortal, and when he hits the ground his body is only bruised, not broken open like a smashed melon on the stone.

For a long time Loki only lies there, stunned from the impact, staring at the shadowed stone before his eyes and tasting blood against his teeth. As unpleasant as they are it is the first sensation -  _true_  sensation - that he's had since he slipped from the bridge, and his body does not know whether to welcome them or not.

At last he wills his limbs to move, and pushes himself up to his side so he can roll onto his back. It is night, and stars cluster thickly in the sky overhead, brilliant in their clarity with no moon to outshine them (but not, of course, as brilliant as the stars above his home.)

All the realms change, some faster than others, but the skies above them do not; and Loki  _knows_  the stars in this sky, the constellations he spent years studying when he first began learning to world-walk. A strange hysteria tickles in his throat and Loki begins to laugh, regardless of the pain it inflicts on his half-crushed ribs and lungs. He cannot stop.

Midgard. It is  _Midgard_  to which he has fallen, and the irony of it all will not release him. What kind of mad coincidence was it that the Bifrost should break, that he should fall, in exactly such a way that would bring him back to the very same place where all his plans were undone? Thor had spent his exile here; and now Loki will, too.

Somewhere out there in the endless sky is Asgard, he knows; uncounted years by the span of light, yet only moments away by the power of the Bifrost. For those who know the dark paths, such as he, it is less than an hour's trek between the folds of reality.

But the bifrost is broken, and even if Loki could walk the dark paths back to Asgard, there is nothing left for him there. The gulf between him and his family (not family,  _not family)_ is so wide that it might as well be all the light-years of this night sky.

_I can never go home again._

Perhaps this is fate. What else can it be? He and Thor have changed places; he was a king while Thor was exiled to this barren rock. Now Thor will be king and Loki is nothing, fallen out from Asgard's gaze entire, given less regard than even the dead.

But no. He is not dead, however much he might have wished for it in his moment of overmounting despair. He shouldn't have slowed himself, should have let his body dash upon the rocks - but he did, and he didn't, and it's too late now to choose otherwise. He lives, he lives and he is  _here_  in the place where all his plans came to ruin; he will not just lay down and die.

The sky at the eastern edge of the horizon has begun to lighten in anticipation of the coming dawn, by the time Loki can make himself stand from the hollow in which had fallen and look around him. In the distance he can see the glimmering lights of a settlement, and he staggers in that direction even as he begins to call on his seidh, conjuring clothes for himself that will let him walk unnoticed amongst the mortals.

Midgard is one of the Nine Realms under the rule of the King of Asgard; that much has always been true. But if they have truly changed so much that they no longer recognize their own gods when they walk among them -

Perhaps... perhaps Midgard is in need of a new king.


	2. The Calm After the Storm [peace]

If Loki intends to rule this realm, he'll have to learn how it works - he can't just barge in at the head of an army and expect to make any headway. (Even if he had an army, which he doesn't.) No. Brute force has never been Loki's way; he will maneuver himself into power through subtlety instead. He will find the reins of power in this land and insinuate himself at their helm, play the shadow behind the throne until all paths of command lead back to him.

It will take time (but Loki has no lack of that.) It will take perseverance (but he has always been stubborn.)

He was born to be king, and Loki means to live his destiny.

Within a few months of studying this realm, Loki begins to see where the lines of power fall. Where Asgard and the other realms esteem martial prowess, Midgard puts all its value in money. Loki has neither, but wealth will be easy enough to accrue with his magic to aid him. He studies the lay of the land and finds the social circles of those with the most money (and thus the most power,) and begins to work his way among them.

No one thinks to question his presence at a party; his dress and bearing declare unequivocally that he belongs here, and a minor expenditure of seidh is enough to fool the watchful eyes of machines and bodyguards alike. Loki mingles and matriculates, converses and confederates, making friends and allies and promises with equal, hollow ease. But mostly what Loki does at the party tonight is watch, and listen.

There is much to learn.

Loki has long practice in fading into the shadows, even without such advantages as magic. With his dark hair and suit it is easy enough to blend in against the dark background on the lounge wall, a drink in his hand as he watches the partygoers. Oblivious mortals. Peasants. _Fools._ They have accepted him inside without hesitation, but he will never be _one_ of them. Never be in a place where he belongs.

For a moment his vision of the party darkens, and he bends his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees another body slip up beside him and sit down in the next seat over.

"So," the person says casually, "did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?"

 _What?_ Loki blinks his eyes clear and looks up at his companion, startled and wary. It's a mortal man, dark-haired and with his hair cropped short in the modern Midgardian fashion. He never forgets a face, he would know if he'd seen this man before and he never has. He can sense the life-force of all the different races of the Realms, and the man beside him is no more than an ordinary mortal, untouched by the uncanny. How can he possibly know?

"Quite a bit, actually," Loki admits, remembering the earth-shattering impact of his fall from the Bifrost. The empty hollow pain of the _nothing_ before that.

"Huh?" The mortal turns to face him, confusion writ on his features, and Loki at least feels a satisfaction at sharing the headache. The stranger's eyes are a warm brown, bright and electrifying in a mobile face that is quick to smile. He wears a short beard that reminds Loki a bit of Fandral - that and his aura of easy charm, unconscious magnetism of a strength he hasn't found yet in many mortals.

"Why did you ask if you did not wish to hear the answer?" Loki asks, his confusion rendering him sharper than he means to.

"Umm... it was a pick-up line," the mortal admits. "Kind of a cheesy one, actually, but I've never gotten _that_ response before. Never tried it on a guy before, admittedly, but still."

"Ah," Loki says, groping for his balance. A Midgardian social custom, then, that Loki knows nothing of. He must be careful not to give too much of himself away. "My apologies. I am not familiar with 'pick-up lines.' "

"That's cute," the mortal declares. "Love the accent, by the way. I'm Tony Stark." He sticks his hand out before him, and Loki knows this ritual at least, so he takes the hand and shakes it, careful not to apply too much pressure.

"Loki Laufeyjarson," Loki intones, giving his name (or at least, the alias he's been using) in return.

For some reason, despite the vast gulf of differences between them, the faint resemblance of this mortal to Fandral is only growing in Loki's mind. Maybe it's the way he's leaning into Loki's space, pressing, the way Fandral does with ladies he wishes to charm. "You're not from around here," Stark observes. "European?"

"No," Loki says, and smiles mysteriously.

"Really? Because with the name, and that suit, and the accent, I was really thinking European. Plus you didn't react when I told you who I was."

"Should I have?" Loki asks, and Stark laughs.

It's a breathtaking laugh, one that transforms his features from rather ordinary-looking to astonishingly handsome. His face lights up, his eyes dancing and his grin flashing all of his teeth as he tosses his head back in merriment. Loki finds himself rather inexplicably warm.

"No, no, I kind of like the change of pace," Stark says. Then he sobers up abruptly and leans forward into Loki's space, his eyes intent. "But seriously, I came over here with the full intention of making a pass at you, if in the clumsiest and kitschiest way possible. You know, I don't usually go for guys, but who could resist, you really pull off the handsome-and-brooding look very well. I'd like to see other looks on you. What do you say?"

Loki chokes. The sharp, instinctive _Know your place, mortal!_ that leaps to his tongue collides with _Certainly, when do we start?_ and the two seem to cancel each other out. He is suddenly intensely aware of his own body beneath the stiff black Midgardian clothes, and the stranger's body sitting alongside his under _his_ clothes. Stark is short but compact, his hands strong and his face and eyes heated with quickening energy. What strength, what suppleness resides in the rest of him? He can only guess at its lines and limits, concealed as it is, and he is stricken with a sudden desire to see how close his guesses come to the reality. He _wants,_ spontaneously and more sincerely than he has wanted anything since he fell to this benighted planet.

After a too-long pause and several false starts, Loki manages to get out, _"Why?"_

Stark grins. "Well, your pretty eyes and legs that just don't quit are two reasons," he says, then frowns as he reconsiders. "Or possibly - four reasons, but the point is, that's not actually why. It was more that I saw you sitting over here, looking like your world had just come down around you."

Loki feels himself stiffen, leans away from Stark's electric presence. "Pity is hardly a seductive quality, Mr. Stark," he says coldly.

"No, it's generally not," Stark responds. "And it's not pity, honest, it's more a matter of - fellow feeling, I guess." He smiles, and it's so tight-stretched and full of pain that for a moment his face looks like it will break open.

Loki hesitates, studying the man before him. And what loss could Stark have possibly felt, that could in any way compare with the destruction of Loki's life in Asgard? What could any mortal know, in their too-short lives, of pain that compares with his?

 _If you don't go with him, you'll never find out,_ a thought whispers. And despite himself, Loki feels his mouth curve into a smile.

He did come here tonight to make connections, after all. Stark's name might not be familiar to him (yet,) but he would hardly have been at this party tonight if he weren't rich and influential; that was the whole point. But that's all justification, really, for the _real_ reason he gives Stark his hand and they rise together from the dark corner.

He _wants_ this man. And Loki always does what he wants.

Stark has his own car and driver, which is good because the routes Loki took to get here are not ones that a mortal can take. The drive is not long, for the party was not so far from their destination; indeed, Loki can see it (though he doesn't know what in Yggdrasil he's looking at) from miles away.

The tower of metal and glass is quiet and dim at this hour of the morning; dim, but not dark. Very little in this mortal city is ever truly dark. Loki keeps an eye on the furnishings, the floors, the sheer size of this dwelling; the other is watching Stark move around in this space, how carelessly he owns it through his sheer presence, and his estimation of Stark's power in this realm goes up accordingly.

"Care for a drink?" Stark offers, going straight to a lavishly-decked bar in the corner.

"Certainly," Loki replies, and as Stark busies himself with the tumblers and bottles, he wanders over to the large, floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows that line the room. The view over the glittering, humming city is magnificent; for a moment he can almost pretend he is back in Asgard.

His maunderings are interrupted by the sound of the mortal clearing his throat behind him, so Loki turns and accepts the proffered glass from his host's hand. Stark leans against the bar in a casual hip-slung pose very similar to how he approached Loki at the party, smiling.

"So, now that I've invited you back to my crib and everything," Stark says. "Mind telling me what's up with you?"

Loki gives him a slow blink. "What is... up with me?" he repeats slowly. It's not that he doesn't understand the meaning of the words, but he's not sure just what aspect of himself Stark can be alluding to. Surely the little mortal can't have noticed -

"You're not human." Stark holds up one wrist, encircled by a glass and metallic device that is flashing in various colored codes. There is a matching display, Loki now sees, on the wall behind the bar. "Tower security systems do a basic scan of every visitor I bring up here. Not normally a big deal, except that every reading I've got on you is way off kilter for an adult human male. Including the gamma detector, which I honestly didn't expect to ever use unless Bruce Banner came to visit someday. One or two could be a glitch, or some sort of medical condition, but all of them? Which really leaves me curious as to _what_ you are."

He ought to be offended, Loki supposes, except that the mortal is speaking with such a tone of affable, friendly curiosity as to make it no offense. Far from sounding hostile or suspicious, he sounds like he just honestly wants to know. As though he invites travelers of the Nine into his home every day and is merely making small talk while they wait.

Loki considers. He's been on Midgard long enough to pick up that mortal society has changed drastically in the last few hundred years, to the point where marvels of technology have long since crowded out old beliefs in magic. A silly cultural prejudice, but judging from their surroundings, Stark seems more invested than most. "Do you want the real answer, or the one that it will be easier for you to accept?" he offers.

"The real answer, but now that you've said that, I'm curious about what the easy answer would be," Stark says promptly.

Loki smiles at him, and takes his drink. "I am an alien shapeshifter, who traveled here through a wormhole, and am currently engaged in infiltrating and studying human society."

Stark's mouth opens, then closes like a fish, and Loki stifles a chuckle behind his glass at the flummoxed expression on his face. "I... okay, that was not what I was expecting to hear for the _easy_ answer. That's, that's going to be pretty hard to beat when it comes to tough things to believe before breakfast. What's the real answer, then?"

Loki sets his glass aside and advances a step or two into the mortal's personal space. He stands his ground, even when Loki raises a hand to hover near the side of his face. "I am Loki Liesmith, son of Odin All-father, warrior of Asgard; and I fell to Midgard from the Bifrost Bridge after a battle with Thor, God of Thunder."

For a moment Stark just stares at him; then slowly, he raises his glass and downs his drink in one gulp. "Yeah, that'd do it," he says. "Um. I think I'll stick with the alien thing, if that's okay with you. I don't think I can really cope with the, the whole God idea."

Loki shakes with silent laughter. How absurd these mortals are, that they would rather believe in something widely acknowledged by their own culture to be an invention of complete fiction, than in truths their ancestors had known for thousands of years.

"So, what's an alien shapeshifter doing on Earth? Or rather, what's all the infiltration and study in aid of?" Stark wants to know. "Intergalactic cultural exchange? Anthropology fieldwork?"

Loki's eyes narrow, even as his lips turn up in a smile. "Why, what does any alien come to Earth to do?" he says, and then lets his voice drop into the deep registers. "Try to take over the world."

Stark snorts in laughter, then covers his face with one hand. "Oh God, that should not be such a completely adorable turn-on," he says.

Loki smirks, and takes the last step forward until his body is flush with Stark's. The other man draws in a heated breath, and then surges forward to meet Loki as their lips join in a kiss.

"Does it not disturb you?" Loki says, when they surface from the kiss for air. He has both hands under the collar of Stark's shirt and one knee between his thighs, and it's not anything like enough contact to satisfy him. "That you - ah - will take to your bed someone you know so little about? Not only a stranger to your house, but to your _world?"_

"Well, I've always been more of a kinesthetic learner," Stark says. His face is flushed, his eyes glazed, breath unsteady; yet still he finds air somewhere for witty quips. "More... um. You know. Hands-on. I learn about things by getting right in there, taking them apart, getting my hands dirty..."

"Sounds good to me," Loki says with a chuckle bare inches from Stark's lips, and dives back for another taste.

* * *

When morning comes, Stark is up and out of the bed, but he has not gone far; he is in the suite's tiny kitchen, summoning mortal magic. To cook with, apparently. He asks Loki to demonstrate his shapeshifting, offering as payment a batch of waffles, and Loki obliges him, changing his hair half-a-dozen different colors before reverting to normal. (But not his skin, no, never that, and certainly not _blue.)_ Even this small magic leaves Stark gratifyingly impressed.

They eat the waffles in bed, and clean each other's fingers, and end up not going anywhere until well after noon. They talk until night falls and Stark's stomach rumbles with neglect; then Stark uses his clever phone to command that food be brought for them. They feed each other bites of food, Stark demanding his opinion on each one; they end up messy enough that a trip to Stark's lavishly decorated bath chambers is in order. Then they retire to bed and do it all again.

When Stark finally peels himself away, reluctant, to tend to his duties as master of his company, he tells Loki he can have his pick of the rooms on the twenty-third floor, and to order out for dinner. He also tells Loki to call him Tony.

That's the first day. There are many more like it to come.

It is easy for Loki to fall into Tony's bed, into his life. Tony does manage to distract him from his conquest of Midgard; actually, living with Tony Stark goes a long way to obviate the need for it. Tony is wealthy enough to keep him well supplied with whatever luxuries this backwards realms can provide. Besides that, he knows that in the strange calculus of this new world Tony is powerful; he has his eyes in all corners of the realm, and employs thousands of lesser men to do his bidding. If he seduces Tony to his will, he can have all the power and influence that his heart desires.

But the truth is that he doesn't get halfway through making Tony Stark fall for him before he's falling himself. They're well matched, in more ways than one - in all the ways, it seems, that matter. Both of them are well-mannered, having been brought up in high society, and both of them have scorned that society in favor of doing as they please.

Loki learns quickly that despite being a mortal, Tony is terrifyingly clever, more than a match for himself. It's one thing to know it in an abstract sort of way, and another thing entirely to be watching the television 'news' one evening and make a droll observation on the narrative habits of the newscasters, only to have Tony return it with a clever quip that leaves him stunned. He is not _used_ to talking with people who can keep up with him, and he soon finds himself scrambling in a game of wits to sharpen old flyting skills long left rusty from lack of exercise.

He soon realizes, though, that Stark is as much out of practice as he. They are both too used to being the smartest man in a room, to being surrounded by humorless drones who don't react to a quarter of their jokes (even if they got them, which Loki thinks is less likely, considering his own company.) It is a surprise and a wonder to find someone else who appreciates his silken-sharp wit, and can match it with a cynical humor that stuns Loki breathless.

They can make each other _laugh,_ and that is a joy that neither of them has known in all too long of a time.

Sexually, they're even more compatible than Loki would have ever dreamed. He has lived for centuries, and over time accumulated quite a resume of lovers - but what Tony lacks in time, he's more than made up for in frequency. Loki has knowledge of the sexual customs of all the Realms, but Tony has the Internet. They both have quite active, curious, and unabashedly _perverted_ imaginations; and any props or aids that Tony cannot construct in his lab, Loki can supply with his magic.

They have quite a lot of sex, and never exactly the same way twice - but they always end it the same way, resting together with their bare skin lined up side by side, Tony's arm hooked over Loki's and their hands intertwined.

* * *

They make comfortable roommates, settling into a routine with astonishing ease considering that both parties have intensely reclusive tendencies. It helps that Tony's tower is so large, and so full of wonders, that if Loki wants to seclude himself for days surrounded by walls of books and silence he can do so. Or if Tony needs to lock himself away in his laboratory with the music blasting all night long, he can do that too.

Loki learns when he can intervene, when he can sneak into Tony's labs past the locks and distract him with a kiss and a chin hooked over his shoulder, drag him out for a meal and a bath and a round of enthusiastic sex on the plush bathrug... and when it is best to just let Tony be.

And they both understand, when the other shakes out of an uneasy sleep in the night and slips out of the bed to go stand in the living room to watch the city lights for a time, when to speak and when to stay silent.

The view from the penthouse at night has always been Loki's favorite thing about Tony's palace. (Tony and Loki have had more than a few (mostly) playful arguments on this topic; Tony continues to insist that his home is not a _'palace_.' As far as Loki is concerned, this is absurd. It is a grand building large enough to house the lord and a small army of his servants; richly decorated and luxuriously furnished, the better to show off his wealth and power to the lands around; and with Tony's defenses installed, it is an impregnable fortress as well. It is, by any definition of the word, a palace.)

During the day, there was no way you could ever mistake New York City for anything other than what it is - a tediously dirty, noisy, ramshackle collection of buildings filled to the bursting with the mortals who abide. Loki is fond enough of Midgard, in a way - the mortals are amusing, in their small ways, and ever thinking of ingenious new ideas (like chocolate fondue).

But at night - at night, when all the smudges and smears are hidden behind the veil of darkness, and the cityscape opens itself below and around his feet in a glittering array of shapes and colors - Loki can almost pretend that he is home.

Tonight the view brings no comfort to him, though, nor does the warmth of Tony's bed. Sleep proves elusive, too many dark thoughts and old memories chasing themselves round and round in his head. Memories of his greatest triumph and his worst shame all mixed together, one and the same.

He hears the shuffling step of Tony stirring behind him, and watches in the dark glass of the mirror as the mortal pads towards him, stifling a yawn. The arc reactor in his chest glows in the low light, and Tony's reflection walks across the tops of the buildings beyond the glass like a star striding down from the sky.

"Gorgeous view, innit?" Tony's husky voice breaks the silence, right before the man himself wraps his arm around Loki's ribcage from behind. He presses his face against Loki's shoulder, his breath damp against his skin, before he adds in an offhand tone, "The cityscape's not bad, either."

This wins a soft snort from Loki, but no more. Tony's smile fades as he studies Loki's expression in the window. "Tough crowd tonight, huh," he says. "What's on your mind, babe?"

"Sometimes I wonder," Loki says softly, reaching up to rest a hand against the cold glass. "What I have done to deserve all this happiness."

"Well, you deserve it just for being an awesome person," Tony says, kissing his neck. "I mean, you've got it all: beauty, brains, brawn, impeccable taste in boyfriends..."

Loki shakes his head. "You don't know," he says. "You don't know. I've done terrible things."

The ugly laugh Tony lets out then surprises him. "Yeah, join the club," he says.

Loki turns to him with a frown. "What club?" he says.

"I dunno, I just think we should form a club," Tony shrugs. "We can make a flier, have weekly meetings and a twelve-step program. We can call ourselves Atrociholics Anonymous."

At the incredulous look Loki gives him, Tony sinks in on himself a little, letting out a sigh. "Look, don't mind me. You know I deflect serious topics with flippancy, it's just how I cope. But seriously. You can tell me anything, I promise. It's all right."

Loki looks away, turning to face the window again although he's not seeing the scintillating city lights any more. "I tried to kill people," he says softly. "A lot of people."

He can see Tony's silhouette in the window, but it's dark; he can't make out his expression. "Did you succeed?"

"No." Loki gives an angry little shrug. Thor stopped him, and he can never decide whether to be hateful or grateful for that. Maybe both at once. "But I _meant_ to."

Truth to tell, he's not sure how many of the frost giants he _did_ kill. He has not Heimdall's long sight, and he never made it back to Hlidskjalf to watch the destruction unfold. He knows the Bifrost wasn't open for long enough to actually crack the planet, nor to raise a storm powerful enough to kill. So it's really just a question of how many of the Jotnar were caught in the direct path of the Bifrost's beam. And how fast the rest of them could run.

Tony takes a long, shaky breath. "Yeah, well," he says, and clears his throat. "I managed to _actually_ kill off a lot of people, without even meaning to. So I guess we're two halves of a pair."

Tony's arms tighten around him, his hand sliding up to rest against Loki's breastbone. Automatically Loki puts one hand up to cover Tony's with his own, twining their fingers together as they rest above his heart. Loki hopes that the matter will end there, but his lover's curiosity is insatiable.

Sure enough - "Why'd you do it?" Tony asks softly.

"Does it matter why?" Loki replies.

Tony shrugs, a motion more felt than seen. "If it matters to you, it matters to me," he says.

Loki takes a deep breath, then lets it out in a sigh. How can he explain? He'd have to go back a thousand years of history to be sure of telling it all. Instead, he decides to just cut right to the heart of the matter - the simplest truths are the ones that cut the deepest. "I thought it would please my father."

Tony's breath catches, as though he's taken a dart to the chest. Loki feels him swallow, clear his throat, before he can speak again. "Yeah, well," he says. "I've been there, and one thing I've learned is that some fathers aren't worth pleasing. I think it's pretty safe to say that any dad who asks for blood sacrifices from you isn't worth your time."

Loki shakes his head, feeling vaguely obliged to defend his father's honor to Tony. "That's not... not how it was," he says; it comes out feeble. "It's not that he asked me to do it. It's just that... I wanted to be great, to do something great, to make myself a hero in his eyes. And... where I come from, the only way to make yourself a great hero is to slay many foes."

"Ah. Warrior culture, huh," Tony says knowingly. It feels strange to reduce it to words that way, to have a _word_ for something that was always invisible to him as water was to a fish. It helps a little to name it, as though by doing so he can remove himself from it, or else remove it from him, he isn't sure.

"Yes," he whispers.

"S funny," Tony says thoughtfully. "Here on earth, we tend to think more highly of heroes who _don't_ kill people." He gives Loki a squeeze. "So it sounds like you're well on your way already."

Loki shakes his head sharply. "I don't want to be a hero," he says forcefully. The very idea makes his stomach roil, after what happened the _last_ time he tried. "Not there, and not here either. I do not have the soul for it."

"Who said anything about souls?" Tony says reasonably. "Being a hero isn't about racking up kill counts and getting crowds to cheer for you. It's about seeing a job that needs to be done, and knowing that you're the only person with the skills and the guts to do it. It's about doing what needs to be done."

And that, Loki reflects, so perfectly describes Tony, and describes all the ways that he and Tony will never be the same.

"Well," Tony says. "Now that that's settled, let's get you back to bed."

Loki shakes his head. "I don't think I could sleep right now, Tony," he admits. "You need not worry. I require far less sleep than you do."

"Now, who said anything about sleep?" Tony says, with a suggestive waggle of his eyebrows.

Loki just stares at him in amused outrage. "Do you really think that the conversation we just had is the sort to put me in the mood?"

Tony sighs. "Look, babe," he says, in a slightly more serious tone of voice. "I can't just make this go away for you. No matter how much I'd like to, there's no magic wand I can wave to make it better. But I've been where you are, and I know that you can at least distract yourself for a little while."

Loki considers this for a few minutes, resisting Tony's encouraging little tugs at his shoulder. At last he nods, and they turn together towards their bedroom.

* * *

It does not particularly bother Loki that his lover is a superhero. After all, he comes from a culture where dressing up in enchanted armor and going out to seek evildoers to smite is the most popular pastime among the leisure class. He does not particularly wish to partake in Tony's heroics, but he can certainly understand them.

No, what distresses Loki is that Tony goes out on these mad quests _alone_. Even Thor, the mightiest of Asgard's warriors, never went anywhere without a band of strong and loyal shield-brothers (well, and a shield-sister) to watch his back. No one can be vigilant in all directions, at all times. Even the mightiest of warriors sometimes falter. And if Tony falters, surrounded by danger and far from home, he may never come back.

They have tearing arguments over it, sometimes. Tony insists that he works alone, that there is no one else who can keep up with him and anyway his preferred tactics aren't designed to work in a group. Loki points out that he could change his tactics if he wished, he could create more suits to give to trusted companions if he weren't such a paranoid misanthrope, at which point Tony yells about stones and glass houses and they must take their leave of each other before they come to blows.

Late at night Loki will sneak into Tony's workshop and cast more protective wards on his suit, but it's made difficult because Tony keeps changing his suits around and he bristles like a cat dumped into water at any evidence of "hocus-pocus" interfering with his technology. The only ward Loki can consistently keep on him is a rune drawn over Tony's heart in the dark hours which is entangled with his own seidh; if Tony's heart ever stops beating, no matter where he is, Loki will know.

* * *

The glass clock-face glows 2:30 as Loki pads through the hallways of Stark Tower, doors hissing obediently aside for him. Loki is not tired, exactly - he needs less sleep than most mortals do - but the dimmed lights and muted sounds of the palace around him combine to put him in a near-somnolent mood.

But Tony is still somewhere in the lower levels of the tower, and their bed holds little appeal for Loki without him in it.

He finds his lover in the war room - Tony called it that as a joke, but it seems to Loki a perfectly honest description - filled with screens and displays. From here Tony can pull news feeds from a dozen different sources, both public and very, very illegally private; from here he can supplement his findings with research into hundreds of databases and think tanks, very few of which he's supposed to have access to at all. All of it coming together to form webworks, shimmering streams of data that paint a picture of the movings of the world today.

Tony is in the center of it, his face grey and lined with fatigue but his eyes intent, flickering rapidly from one screen to the next. The cold blue light of the projected displays washes over him, striping him with light and dark and frost and fire.

Loki comes up behind him - quietly, but not so quietly that Tony won't sense his coming - and rests his hands on Tony's shoulders, leaning over to kiss his neck. Then he falls quiet and still, watching the dataflow over Tony's shoulder. He intends no seduction, no attempt to lure Tony away from his projects and back to their bed; there is a time and a place for such things, and now is not such a time.

Tony needs this, Loki knows, needs to monitor and watch over the world he has taken upon himself to protect. There is more to being a hero than simply going when you are called out and hitting the enemy really hard in the chest: some threats move for a long time underground, unseen, before they finally surface.

"Quiet night?" Loki breathes in Tony's ear, at length. A smile flickers briefly over Tony's face, more grimace than grin.

"Almost suspiciously quiet," Tony mumbles, but his voice is absent. Loki makes no further move to distract him, choosing instead to watch the screens along with him. He is vaguely aware that there are some things that Tony ought not to allow him to see, according to some nebulous 'security' concerns, but Tony has never bothered with it and Loki does not know why he should.

Then an image flickers at the corner of his eyes and Loki freezes, relaxed muscles going abruptly tense. Tony notices the change, turns in his seat to frown up at Loki. "What is it, babe?" he asks.

"That man," Loki says, low and tense as he reaches out for the picture that caught his eye, fingers brushing over insubstantial air. Tony obligingly brings the photo forward, expanding it to hang in the air before them both. "I know this man. What has happened?"

Tony's eyebrows go up, but if he hears the upset tension in Loki's voice he does not seek to question it - at least, not right away. He calls up more screens with a flick of his fingers. "His name's Erik Selvig," he says. "And that's about all I know, yet. This is from SHIELD's files - he was an employee of theirs."

"Was?" Loki demands. And yes, it _is_ the same man - the white-haired, red-faced gaffer who had been in Puente Aguenta with Jane Foster and _Thor._

"Was," Tony repeated grimly. "He was murdered this morning." Tony flicks through more screens, brings up another photo - this of a tanned, sandy-haired man in a black sleeveless vest, staring solemnly at the camera. Tony whistles. "By his own bodyguard, apparently."

Loki studies the picture of Selvig with narrowed eyes, chewing absently on the edge of his lip. "Selvig worked with Jane Foster to create an Einstein-Rosen bridge," he mutters. "What was he working on, within SHIELD? Can you tell?"

"That'll be classified all to hell. Give me half a mo," Tony says, and turns back to his keyboard to crack open the files. Loki waits, curtailing his impatience. If SHIELD has made contact with Asgard, with Odin, with Thor...

At last Tony sits back. "Huh," he says. "Well, he wasn't working with wormholes, unless they come in suspiciously clear-cut square packaging, anyway. This was his project." The image of a bright blue cube floats in the air before them, and the breath leaves Loki's lungs in a disbelieving huff as he recognizes it.

It is the Tesseract, one of the All-Father's great treasures. Loki has never seen it in person, only in the archive listings - it was lost to Midgard years before Loki was born. "SHIELD has this?" Loki says incredulously.

Tony's expression is grim, mouth tight and eyes narrowed. "Not any more they don't," he says. "It was stolen the same day Selvig was killed. Probably killed him to get to it, in fact."

"Who was the thief?" Loki demands.

"That's the weird thing," Tony responds. "Apparently it was one of their own agents - a top-level commando named Clint Barton. Internal SHIELD security is having an aneurysm trying to figure out what happened - he was supposed to be one of their most loyal operatives."

He pulls up a loop of video, apparently from the hour of the theft; together they watch in the silent, black-and-white footage as the blond man enters the room. Selvig turns his head to look at him, perhaps to greet him; without any warning the man lunges forward. The melee is blurred, brief, and bloody; less than ten seconds later the man in black has seized the Tesseract in gore-coated hands and disappeared.

"Head of psych insists that this isn't Barton's usual fighting style at all," Tony says. "He's an exclusive long-range specialist, for a start. They're still guessing, but their top theory at the moment is some sort of brainwashing. Although he checked in normal the day before, so what sort of brainwashing could take effect that quickly is anyone's guess."

"Either that, or it was not him at all," Loki muses, "but only someone wearing his skin."

Tony looks up at him sharply. "Not him? What are you saying - shapeshifters?"

Loki shrugs. "Why not?" he says. "They may be uncommon on Earth, but there are many species in the universe who have such a talent. The Skrulls, of course, and some among the Chitauri." He rather hopes it was not the Chitauri, for this Barton's sake; the Skrulls merely mimic the appearance of their targets, but the Chitauri use a much more direct and gruesome method of taking another creature's skin as their own.

"What are - okay," Tony cuts himself off, running his hands through his hair and then clenching them on the desktop. "Okay, but I've got a line on orbital traffic over the entire globe, and we haven't seen anything coming down. How could _aliens_ have gotten that deep into SHIELD's secure bases?"

Loki raises one eyebrow. "A scientist whose specialty is in generating wormholes is invited to work on a secret project with an artifact with the power to manipulate the fabric of space itself, and you are _surprised_ to find aliens appearing in the mix?"

"Well, when you put it like _that..."_ Tony mutters darkly. He turns back to the terminal, typing rapidly away; whatever he finds, his frown only deepens. "Why the hell didn't they call me?"

"Perhaps they knew you would find out on your own," Loki suggests dryly, but Tony is in no mood for witty banter.

"And now we've got a possible alien saboteur running loose with a powerful alien artifact," Tony says, and curses. "This could be - astonishingly bad. In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of any possible ways this could be good."

"Tony," Loki says warningly. "You're not thinking..."

"That this is a job for Iron Man?" Tony whirls around in his station chair, flashing Loki a grin that his all teeth. "Hell, yes."

"Hell, _no,"_ Loki says firmly, grabbing him by the shoulders. "Listen to me, Tony, you have no idea what you're getting into. The Tesseract can rip space itself in half, and even a fraction of its power could obliterate you where you stand - even _with_ the suit. You can't -"

"I've got to, Lokes," Tony says impatiently. "I don't doubt that this thing is just as dangerous as you're saying. But that's exactly _why_ I've got to find it, and the little green man that ran off with it, _before_ they do any damage with it."

It is pointless to try to dissuade him on that point, Loki knows. As much so as it ever would have been to dissuade Thor, when he'd gotten the idea of battle and glory fixed in his head. So he changes tactics. "At least do not go in search of them alone," he says. "Find other heroes to aid you, maybe those in the 'Avengers' files that you say Fury keeps -"

Tony lets out a loud, disgusted 'tchah!' sound that for a moment reminds Loki so horribly of Odin that he cuts off mid-word. "Oh please! You seriously think it would do a damn bit of good to bring, what, Captain freaking America along to fight aliens? What's he going to do, recite the Pledge of Allegiance at them? I can just see the headlines now -"

"Will you be serious for a change?" Loki demands, frustrated. And he knows how ridiculous it is that _he_ should be saying such a thing, but they're both tired, tense and frustrated, and this is not a conversation either of them wants to be having but Tony _needs -_

"Well, how can I be?" Tony snaps back. "You keep going on about how bad I need _help,_ but then _you won't fucking help me!"_

Loki fell back, his hands breaking contact with Tony's skin, and the silence rings in the chamber around them.

"You said you would never ask me that," Loki says, quiet and chilled. "You promised you would not."

"Loki," Tony begins, his voice anxious. "Look, I didn't mean that -"

Loki shakes his head slowly, taking another step back. Because after years of chasing after Thor, defending Thor, cleaning up Thor's messes and getting not the least scrap of regard in return - Loki had sworn he would never do that again. Would never make himself a slave to another man's cause, however noble; would never let himself be relegated to an accessory, to a _sidekick._ He cares about Tony, he _loves_ Tony, and if Tony were ever to look past him with that same cold indifference, that carelessness, that taking-for-granted -

It's absurd, Loki knows, but that doesn't mean it's not real; a choking panic rises in his breast every time he imagines it. He is not a hero, not like Tony, not like _Thor,_ and the one time he had _tried_ to play the role, it ended in such disaster that his entire life collapsed around it. He can still feel the weight of the ruins crushing him down, however he tries to forget it.

And so he turns a deaf ear to his lover's anxious entreaties, vanishes from the underground lab without another word.

* * *

Loki doesn't see Tony for the next two days. It is hard to say which of them is more studiously avoiding the other; Loki absents himself to spend a day in Europe, in Venice, and when he returns the next morning he finds that Tony has left to attend a business meeting in Phoenix. He feels simultaneously grateful for the breathing space, and a little bit _abandoned._

But on the third day Loki walks into their bedroom and stops short; sitting on his pillow is a purple-and-pink... _monstrosity_ of a stuffed animal. It has the general conformation of a horse, with four legs ending in hooves and a mane over an arched neck, but that is about where the similarity ends.

Loki wonders if Tony is mocking him. At any other time he would not have any reason to doubt it, and would already be thinking up his next counter-prank, but - "What," Loki says in an icy voice, "is _that,_ and what is it doing on my pillow?"

Tony emerges from the bathroom opposite, drying his hands. He adopts a casual look, but his anxiety is betrayed by his too-wide eyes. "Oh, just a little souvenir I picked up in Tempe," he says offhandedly. "I figured you'd like it. It's a limited edition first-release one-tenth scale Twilight Sparkle, very hard to get. All you vikings, you like horses, right?"

"I am perfectly fond of horses," Loki says, and he uses the very tips of his fingers to remove the offending toy from his pillow and consign it to the oblivion that is the space behind their headboard. "But _that_ is in no way a horse. That is, at best, a gruesome parody of a horse."

"Oh," Tony says. "Um. Well, it's the thought that counts, right?"

There's an awkward pause that hovers in the space between them, Loki with his back still turned to Tony, who is still half the room away. It's the closest they've been to each other since their argument over the Tesseract three days ago, and Loki misses Tony's touch with a craving that burns. But he will not be the first one to yield.

A soft footstep behind him; Loki stiffens, but holds himself perfectly still as Tony comes up and lays his hands on Loki's shoulders, rests his forehead against the curse of Loki's spine. "I'm sorry," Tony says, and Loki knows well how rare it is for him to say those words (almost as rare as it is for he himself to say them.) "I shouldn't have said what I did."

Loki closes his eyes for a long moment while he tries to work out his feelings. Guilt is heaviest, that he cannot be what Tony needs him to be; then resentment at Tony for making him feel that way, when he has done _nothing_ wrong. "Accepted," he says evenly, and unbends enough to turn around and rest his hands on Tony's elbows in turn. It's not quite an embrace, but it's the beginning of one. "So long as you truly understand what it is that you are apologizing for."

"Look, I know that you're worried about me, okay?" Tony says. "I don't mean to worry you. It's just that... when I think about trusting anybody with my back, in a fight, and then I think about it being anybody but you - it just doesn't work."

Loki nods in quiet understanding. He knows all about paranoia, and mistrust. It is flattering to find himself on the other side of that barrier, for a change, but not quite so much as to overcome the fear that comes with it. "I do worry," he says. "But I don't want you to use your own safety as a hostage against me." Because that's what it feels like - felt like, when Tony had screamed _and you won't help me_ in his face. Like Tony refuses to accept any help unless Loki gives him what he asks for.

"God, that's not what I'm trying to do, I swear," Tony groans. "Look, you're so strong - you could be amazing, fighting crime, if that's what you wanted to do. We could be one hell of a pair." Loki stiffens angrily, tries to pull out of Tony's embrace, but Tony clings to him stubbornly. "But this, this whole 'they fight crime' career is something you can only commit to if _you_ have the drive. Not just because you think you ought to, or God forbid, because someone _else_ thinks you ought to. That way lies burn-out and disaster. I don't want that to happen to us. I don't want anything we do together to come out of a feeling of obligation, Loki. You mean too much to me for that."

It is convenient, Loki thinks, that they are already in the bedroom when Tony gave him this apology (although he's sure Tony had that in mind when he chose the bed to deposit his ill-thought present.) The icy shield Loki held about himself melts and he pulls Tony in his arms, the smaller man giving a moan of relief as he attacks Loki's clothes. It's much easier to be with Tony than it is to be angry with him, to hold himself apart.

"You give away so much of yourself," Loki whispers, letting his worst fears out. "I... wonder sometimes, if there will be anything left of you for me."

"I don't want Iron Man to come between us," Tony says fervently, punctuating his words with kisses. "I won't let it destroy us, the way it did with me and Pepper."

"Pepper?" Loki's hackles go up, and his whole body tenses. Tony tries to hold him close, but Loki resists his clinging hands and pulls back far enough to glare. "Who or what is _Pepper?"_

"Oh," Tony says, supremely awkward. "Um, haven't we talked about this before?"

"We have _not."_ Loki says, icicles dripping off every word.

"Ah." Tony sits back against the counterpane, clad only in his undone pants mussed hair. It's a fetching sight, but Loki is not to be deterred. "Pepper Potts. She, um, she and I used to be together. Before you."

Pepper _Potts?_ Loki has the vaguest familiarity with the name; there's a Virginia Potts who runs Tony's company for him when he is not there (which is more often than not, these days, between Iron Man and Loki himself.) He has met her a few times in passing, has a vague memory of bright copper-colored hair and an air of harried tension.

"Now she runs Stark Industries," Tony rattles on, babbling somewhat in his nervousness. "She does an amazing job of it, really, better than I ever did. Well, she doesn't get drunk and make an ass of herself in public, putting her one above me. But it works out pretty well. She used to try to keep me in line - hey, compared to that, running a Fortune 500 company doesn't even make her break a sweat."

Loki tries to read Tony's mood, feeling carefully in this strange situation for the appropriate reaction. Does Tony still have feelings for this woman? Should Loki accept them, or feign a show of jealousy in order to encourage Tony to put them behind him as quickly as possible?

"She sounds... competent," Loki says at last, his voice carefully neutral.

"She's amazing," Tony says, his voice husky and faintly wondering. "Smart, gorgeous, tough, brave and caring... for such a long time, she was the only one who believed in me. Stood by me. I'd never be where I am today without her - hell, I wouldn't even be _anywhere_ without her. She saved my life. In more than one way. God, there's no one in the world like Pepper."

Loki tenses up, though with a great effort he keeps his fingers relaxed and soothing as he pets Tony's hair. That show of jealousy might not be so feigned, after all.

"But?" he prompts softly. There must be a _but,_ else Tony would still be with this - this Potts woman, and not lying beside _him_ now.

Tony's face goes tight and tense with pain and grief, and Loki hates it, wants to smooth each one of those lines away. "She was so good to me," he says, his voice thick with guilt. "She was so good to me, and I couldn't be good to her. I put her through so much, and I couldn't be _there_ for her, not in the ways she was there for me.

"It's not a balanced relationship if one person is always giving and giving and the other is only taking. There were so many things I couldn't give back, there were so many things that I could never share with her. Because there are parts of me that aren't okay, that are dark and dirty and being with her when she's so pure and _good_ just made me feel like shit." Tony shuts his eyes, and glimmers of bright tears snaked down his temples into his hair. "By the time we broke up every time I saw her face, I'd hate myself a little more. And I knew there would never be an end to it."

Loki stays quiet, sensing that now is not the time for silver words - for any words. He needs only be here, to offer his presence and his touch and his warmth.

At last Tony rolls over in the bed, flinging an arm over Loki's waist. "So, yeah," he says, his voice rough and heavy but businesslike again. "That's that."

"And I?" Loki says softly.

"And you what?" Tony ripostes, shifting so he can look up Loki's chest into his face.

"Well, I'm certainly not going to win any competitions for purity," Loki says dryly, "nor goodness, nor charity of heart. What do you get from your association with me?"

Tony's face splits in a wide grin. "What, besides the tons of really really great sex and the prestige of knowing that I'm fucking an alien god?"

"Besides that," Loki agrees. "Are you and I not also unbalanced?"

"No," Tony says thoughtfully. "I don't think we are."

He shifts again to get his knees under him, and begins crawling up Loki's body towards his head. "You balance me," he murmurs into Loki's skin, between bites and kisses. "You complete me. You keep up with me. You _challenge_ me. You... make me want to be more than I am. Instead of making me wish I was less."

Loki's heart gives a little jump, hearing Tony's feelings for him pour out so earnestly. He seizes Tony's arms and rolls them both over, so that he is now on top, hovering over Tony with his hair hanging around both their faces. "I _complete_ you, do I?" he murmurs, making the words as suggestive as he can.

Tony grins up at him. "Yeah," he says. "You do."

Loki closes his eyes and leans down to meet Tony's mouth with his own; the outside world is forgotten, for a time.

* * *

The signal comes in a few weeks later, in the early evening when Loki and Tony are both lounging around casually in his penthouse suite as night falls across the city. Tony has acquired (through somewhat dubious means) the inner workings of one of Doom's grand robots and is amusing himself taking it apart, carefully examining and labeling each component to see how it ticks. Loki reclines on a soda nearby, reading a book, although he makes himself available for advice and commentary on the places where Doom has woven clumsy magic in with his electronics.

Loki cocks his head to the side as the strident beeping noise fills the tower; he's become accustomed to many of Tony's alerts and signals over time, but this one is new to him. New to Tony, too, if the brief look of disorientation on his face is any indicator. Then understanding dawns, and Tony tosses aside the robotic parts as he scrambles to his feet, striding across the room to the nearest console. "JARVIS, triangulate that and bring up a map for me," he orders. _"Yes, sir,"_ the AI replies.

"What is this in aid of?" Loki inquires, getting up to drift after him. A globe of light springs into being between them, and Loki recognizes it as Midgard. Lines of light fan out over its surface, swirling to join at a point near the top of the sphere. Tony frowns at it intensely.

"Atmospheric electromagnetic interference spike," Tony says absently. "I monitor the airwaves, have it set to ping me if it goes above a certain threshhold. Which it has. _Way_ over. Looks like there's a hole forming over Antarctica, and I don't think we can blame this one on hairspray."

Loki doesn't dignify that nervous quip with more than a quiet snort, but Tony isn't listening to him anyway. His frown is increasing, brows drawn together heavy and dark with worry. "Energy target looks like the South Pole," he mutters. "Energy _source_ looks like - nowhere at all, actually. It is in fact actually coming out of the sky." His eyes flick up to Loki, intense and wary. "Some of your people?"

Loki walks around to face the console beside him, frowning. He can't read the arcana of the measurements enough to say. "Show me," he demands, and Tony flicks through a few options until they get a real-color picture, taken from satellites.

The anomaly hangs in the air, spreading writhing blue light across the sky - nothing at all like the Bifrost's roaring golden waterfall. Loki shakes his head. "Definitely not Asgard," he says, then narrows his eyes at the flickering lines. "But that hue does look familiar. Do a cross-check with the Tesseract's signature."

Tony mutters a curse, but rushes to pull up the Tesseract's files he stole from SHIELD and compare the two. He lets out a low whistle. "Well, I'll be damned," he says. "Looks like we found our missing toy."

In the weeks since the death of Erik Selvig they have both searched for the missing Tesseract, but without success. Tony ran a constant facial-recognition scan for the rogue agent, but turned up no hits - either he had gone to ground so thoroughly that not a single camera had caught him in all that time, or (what Loki considered more likely) the shape-shifter who had stolen his face had discarded it in favor of another disguise. Without that link, there was simply nothing to trace. Loki had run his own searches, in his own way, but the thief obviously knew enough about his prize to keep it safely hidden away.

Until now.

Tony whips out a handheld device. "I better let Fury know about this," he mutters. "Not a good idea to keep it in the dark, even if they do get pissy about the files."

"Surely he has his own sources of information?" Loki asks

"Yeah, but none are as good as me," Tony grins, and sets the phone aside with a snap. "There. Fury can yell into my voice mail all he likes," he says.

Loki watches him as he hops to his feet and begins to stride about the room, setting things to his will with an abbreviated voice command or a flick of his fingers. "JARVIS, get some of Stark Industries' satellites in a better position over the South Pole," he orders. "I want to be able to count every pore on their noses. And keep an eye on military chatter of every channel we have access to, will ya, and keep me apprised on any troop movement towards Antarctica."

_"Yes, sir."_

"You are going?" Loki asks; a redundant question, he already knows the answer.

"Yeah." Tony flashes him a tight smile; his eyes are already looking into the distance, preparing for the battle ahead. "Don't know what they're here for or what they want, but their opening playbook isn't looking too friendly: killed two of our people, stole the Tesseract, and are now bringing unauthorized troops into _our_ airspace. On the more-than-off chance that the shooting starts, I want to be on the scene, and it's a long flight to Antarctica."

Loki follows Tony over to the wall, hanging back for a moment while Tony turns his back to the suit and lets his machine mount it on his body. He steps forward once the process is almost complete, raising a hand to stop the faceplate from closing.

"Wait," he says, and Tony does - lingering long enough for a kiss good-bye, hot and moist and full of promise. Loki slides his arms around Tony, ignoring the chill of the hard shell as he pulls his lover into a brief embrace. Tony tries to return it, clanking awkwardly, but the suit of armor really isn't made for such intimate gestures.

That's fine by Loki. The important part is that he rests his head on Tony's shoulder for a moment while his hands trace runes on the smooth expanse of Tony's backplate. The ward is simple enough: a locking-spell, meant to hold strongly and guard against intrusion. No one save Loki himself will be able to pry Tony's armor open from the outside, not unless he opens it himself.

"Come back soon, and come back safe," Loki whispers, as he always does when Tony leaves on one of his missions.

"It's a date," Tony says, flippant as he always is. "We'll do late-night coffees and watch Rifftrax, I could use a bit of scathing criticism of bad film." He never says goodbye at moments like these, never says anything that could sound portentous.

Reluctantly, Loki releases him, and Tony clanks to the launch pad outside the wide glass doors. With a roar of the jets, he's airborne, and then gone.

* * *

The next eight hours are an exercise in steadily rising tension. Loki stays in touch with Tony over the suit's radio, via JARVIS, relaying him information even though there's not much either of them can do about it.

"Eight kingdoms have launched armies towards your southern continent, so far," Loki reports. They are not all that impressive as armies go, compared to the might of Asgard; but he supposes by mortal standards, this is quite a mighty force indeed. "But the distance involved is great, and they must move men and equipment over the water."

"Any of them scheduled to get here before me?" Tony asks. He's moving faster than any of the armed forces so far, but he also has further to go than some of them.

 _"Only the Australians, Sir,"_ JARVIS chimes in helpfully.

"Australians, huh. Could be worse, I can deal with the Australians. Nice people, very laid-back, they make pretty good beer," Tony says. "What about any other capes?"

He's asked this before - several times, and the repetition is the only hint Tony gives of his anxiety. Loki doesn't bother to run through the whole list again, instead skipping only to the new additions since Tony's last update. "The newsmen here are making much of the fact that Captain America is accompanying the U.S. troops," Loki reports, glancing over at the screen where a half-dozen different news channels are playing. They don't have much real information to offer, and so he is mostly keeping them muted and off to the side.

"Captain America. Oh, joy," Tony groans. "Well, on the up side, I guess this isn't his first arctic campaign. Hope he packed his star-spangled long underwear."

A buzzer sounds in Tony's helmet, carrying over the comm channel to Loki's ear. _"Landfall in five minutes,"_ JARVIS announces.

"Showtime," Tony mutters, and Loki falls silent. The comm channel will remain open, and Loki will be able to hear Tony and JARVIS converse, but he knows better to speak when that will only distract his lover. "All right, let's get a start on Operation Close Encounters of the - holy shit. Holy shit, they've got a regular shantytown down here."

Loki knows what Tony is seeing; has been watching it grow on the satellite view over the last eight hours. The Chitauri have been funneling their soldiers in through the portal at a steady rate of thousands per hour, but that is not even the worst of it; they have also made use of great airborne leviathans to ferry through tons of metal, armaments, supplies. All night the Chitauri have been digging in, cutting through the ice and bedrock beneath to create bunkers, trenches and earthen embankments.

Loki seethes with frustration at allowing their enemy to so entrench themselves, but there was no other choice; no force that Midgard possessed could have crossed the endless miles of water any faster.

 _"Sir, the Australians have made landfall,"_ JARVIS announces.

"Well, guess I'd better lay out the welcome mat," Tony says. "JARVIS, scout a good approach lane for them and let's begin clearing.

 _"Yes, Sir,"_ the AI responds, and they're off and away.

Over the next few hours Loki paces the control room, watching and listening to reports streaming in from the battlefield in the southern wasteland. One Midgardian army after another joins the fray, and yet even with all their powers combine they cannot overcome the Chitauri forces.

The Chitauri have weapons and armor that easily match anything the mortals can bring to bear, alien technologies from beyond the stars. The howling arctic winds of their chosen staging point do not slow them, accustomed as they are to the cold vacuum of space; their human foes must fight the cold and their enemies at the same time, and can bring to bear only as many soldiers as they can protect from its icy claws.

And still the portal brings forth a steady stream of foes. For every one that the humans manage to kill, two more replacements come through from beyond - but the mortal soldiers that fall cannot be easily replaced, not with their supply lines stretched so far from their home soil. The Chitauri make haste to seize any human soldier that falls, and drags them back out of sight beyond their fortifications. Not one such injured soldier has come back.

Through it all the Chitauri continue to dig, to build, to entrench their presence on this world. The Stark Industries satellites that Tony ordered have finally gotten into position, giving Loki a remote but crystal-clear view of what is happening in the heart of their encampment. There is a purposefulness, a meaning behind the careful arrangement of their structures that Loki can see on the satellite images, although he cannot yet divine its purpose -

The wind shifts direction, bringing with it a brief flash of clarity on the screen, and Loki's eyes widen as the pattern shifts into place. The lines upon the ground, the walls and trenches all combine to form a symbol. It is only vaguely familiar to Loki, a type of magic he has never thought to use, but the sight of it fills him with dread nonetheless.

It is a summoning sigil, meant to call creatures from the dark underworlds of the Great Tree and bind them to the caster's will - but he has never seen or imagined a summoning on such a massive scale. What could they possibly mean to call from here, and how do they even dream to control it?

A voice crackles out of the speakers, and Loki identifies it with a quick glance at the screens; it is one of the military channels that JARVIS hacked for them. He cannot immediately identify which kingdom it belongs to, since all languages sound the same to the All-Tongue. "Platform to all units; retreat to Staging Area Bravo. We have Big Boy incoming. Repeat, Big Boy is incoming. ETA at oh-niner-thirty. Retreat to Staging Area Bravo on the double."

He has been listening to military chatter for the last twelve hours, much of it jargon that is incomprehensible to his ears. But something about this transmission makes him nervous. There should be no reason to call for a general retreat of all troops - not unless something very nasty indeed is on the way. "JARVIS? Of what do they speak?" he asks.

 _"I cannot say with a hundred percent certainty, Master Loki,"_ JARVIS says apologetically. _"However, in past American military campaigns, 'Big Boy' was the codename for the deployment of the atomic bomb."_

Loki swears. He hits the button that will open a channel to Tony; he does not wish to interrupt his lover during battle, but this is intelligence that Tony needs to know. "Tony, you must clear the battle zone as quickly as you may. American command has fired atomic missiles into the battlefield."

There's no reply, only a faint static on the line. "Tony?" Loki repeats, panic beginning to rise at the continued silence.

 _"My apologies, Master Loki,"_ JARVIS says. _"I am unable to make a connection with the suit. It appears that his power reserves have been drained too far to give priority to communication channels."_

Loki rises from his chair and paces the small chamber, letting loose the vilest curses he can think of. Before he even knows what he's doing, he's reached the elevator and has punched the button for the roof.

Too long. He's waited too long on the sidelines, while Tony thrust himself foolishly into danger and Midgard's pathetic excuse for warriors flailed about incompetently. He should have joined the battle _hours_ ago.

 _He's but a mortal,_ a nagging voice whispers in the back of his mind. _Why do you risk your life for him?_

Loki ignores it. His family rules over all the Nine Realms, Midgard included. He _is_ King here, even if he chose to put it aside for a little while. The Chitauri are invading _his_ kingdom, and they will soon learn the folly of crossing a Son of Odin in battle.

* * *

The longest part of this journey will be traveling to the nearest entry-point of Midgard's secret ways. Loki opts to shift himself into the form of a hawk to make the best time; he cannot, perhaps, fly as fast as a Midgardian vessel can drive, but he can cut straight across all of the tangled roadways and traffic that would otherwise slow him down. Nevertheless the time crawls agonizingly across him with every frantic beat of his wings, and he nearly bursts his heart before he arrives at the transition point and resumes his own form, stepping into the dark paths that cross the surface of the planet.

Once he has made the path, the nine-thousand mile journey to the planet's nadir will take very little time at all. Fortunately, the dark ways that crisscross the planet's surface tend to lie close along the magnetic lines, and they converge at the poles very near to Loki's destination.

Loki bursts out of the dark path in mid-air, and has to make another hasty shapeshift to keep from falling to the frozen sea below. In the shape of an albatross he flies in wide circles above the ice-encrusted landmass, feeling the arctic winds whip over him. The cold does not bother him at all, and he prefers not to think of why that is.

He needs information. Unlike Tony, who carries his network of computers with him, Loki was cut off from the data flow as soon as he stepped out of the Tower. He sees the battlefield spread out below him, a chaotic mess of half-melted ice and charred earth and Chitauri bodies. No human bodies, he observes, even from this vantage point. And no sign of Tony.

His sharp eyes spy a large, bulky vessel hovering over the water not far away; he recognizes the shape of it as SHIELD's floating castle, the Helicarrier. Director Fury will be there, Loki guesses, overlooking his army's efforts in the field. He makes for the Helicarrier, flapping his powerful wings to build up speed before he dives for the broad glass windows.

At the last moment, he shifts shape and phases his body so that he passes through the glass and lands on the metal catwalk below. The bridge is full of uniformed men, attending banks of computers that look, to Loki's eye, of a far inferior craftsmanship to Tony's.

" - lost contact with Marine Two, sir," some unfortunate underling is saying as Loki materializes on the bridge. "We've had no contact from Captain Rogers - " He breaks off as he sees Loki, his eyes widening, but Loki doesn't give a damn.

All his attention is reserved for the dark-skinned man with one eye, who stands at the helm of the ship with all his underlings and mortal magics arrayed around him. "Director Fury," he says, still getting his breath back after his flight. "Where is Tony Stark?"

The one-eyed man jerks around to face him, then his gaze narrows. "You must be Loki Laufeyjarson," he says in greeting. "I've heard about you from Mr. Stark, although not nearly as much as I ought to have."

Loki ignores this. He paces forward, scanning over all the displays and re-orienting himself as to the battlefield. It is later than he thought, the strange twilight gloom of this southern latitude throwing off his senses. "Where is Tony Stark?" he repeats. "When is this atomic weapon of yours due to arrive?"

"They already have."

Loki whirls around, panic seizing his chest and throat. _"What?"_ he manages to get out. He was too late, _he was too late and Tony had no warning -_

"The ICBMs arrived half an hour ago," Fury says flatly, eyes narrow as he watches Loki's face. "They were an unqualified failure. Our enemy has learned to use the Tesseract energy to provide portal-based air defenses."

He turns and gestures at one of his minions, who hurries to call up a video display; it's a recording from the Helicarrier itself, with a time-stamp of half an hour ago. It shows a fixed, distant view of the Chitauri base; as they watch, a trio of dark missiles streak down from above, wreathed in a halo of fiery wrath from their passage through the atmosphere.

The three dark points grow in size as they approach the Chitauri base - and then there are three rapid flashes of eye-searing blue, arcing through the air before them. When the screen clears, the missiles are gone.

"As best as our scientists can decipher it, they generated a series of mini-portals in the path of the missiles," Fury rattles off. "They weren't stable, not in the way the main invasion portal has proven to be - but then, they didn't need to be, either."

Loki turns on his heel and strides across the bridge, approaching Nick Fury, who watches him with a cold calculation. "Mr. Laufeyjarson, I'm given to understand that you are an extraterrestrial, like our grey friends on the ground there. What can you tell us about -"

Loki reaches out and grabs Fury by the lapels of his coat, jerking the soldier forward. He hears shouts and the clatter of weapons from around him, but pays them no mind. "You waste my time," he hisses into the man's face. " _Where. Is. Tony?"_

Fury waves down the minions who had started to leap to his defense; then, in a motion so smooth Loki can't help but be impressed, he breaks Loki's hold on his coat and sends the god stumbling backwards. "We lost radio contact with him an hour ago," he says quietly. "The last ping we had on him, he was less than two kilometers north of the Tesseract's position. Nothing else we have has been able to get anywhere near that close. I'm sorry."

Loki's jaw clenches hard enough that he can almost hear his teeth cracking, and he whirls around and stalks back towards the windows through which he came in. Useless, this lot of mortals is _useless;_ if he wants something done, he must do it himself.

"Mr. Laufeyjarson," Fury calls out, and Loki does not turn around but he does slow his pace, slightly. "SHIELD's forces, as well as all other militaries in the vicinity, have called for a retreat. We're not accomplishing anything on the mainland except feeding more men into the grinder; we need to retreat, wait for reinforcements and coordinate with each other before we launch another assault. We don't have the resources to spare to go after one missing man, even a missing hero. If you go down there now, none of my men will be able to help you. I'm sorry."

Loki stills for a moment, then calls his seidh around him; turns his body as insubstantial as a shadow, that he might pass through the floor of the Helicarrier and drop into the open air below.

At least, he thinks, there will be no mortals left to get in his way.

* * *

Now that the armies of Midgard are withdrawing, there is less than ever to check the Chitauri army. Loki can hear them howling their triumph, the call starting at one edge of the invading wave and traveling to the other, even as he hurtles towards the center of their citadel.

Stealth will not avail him here, not when the bodies are so tightly-packed, and anyway he does not have _time_ for a creeping approach. He sweeps up a discarded polearm and plunges straight into the melee, slicing and stabbing and leaving a long trail of blood and severed limbs behind him. A score or more of Chitauri fall before him, but eventually the sheer endless number of them overtakes him; the weight of their bodies bears him to the ground, pinning him and stamping on his hands until they can pry his weapon free from his grasp.

Clammy, many-fingered hands seize him and haul him up, dragging his limbs over the frozen ground. Loki struggles a little bit - more for form's sake than anything else - but they are taking him in the direction he wants to go: to the center. If this is where they are taking all their prisoners, then Tony will be there too.

He can only hope he's not too late.

They drag him to what he can only describe as a _yard,_ a wide scrape of ground where the ice and topsoil have been cleared right down to the bedrock. Crude fortifications surround the clearing in rings, and the beginnings of what looked like more permanent buildings are beginning to go up at patchy intervals around the outside. The only one that's anywhere near finished is a tower, built of crude-cut stone blocks and metal beams of an alloy not found or made anywhere on Midgard, been built up around the Tesseract: Loki can still see its blue light frothing and spilling around the top of the tower. Suspended in the air above it is the hole in the sky through which the army _still_ pours, an endless stream of foes.

In the clearing before the tower has been dug a series of ditches and trenches, fanning like spokes in a wheel around one wide, shallow pit in the center. It's filled near to the brim with a dark liquid that _steams_ in this frozen air, and even from this distance Loki can't fail to recognize the stench of blood. The pattern of trenches (drains) is suddenly horrifyingly clear to him - this is where they bring all their captives, and then -

A tumult sounds from the other end of the courtyard, hoots and hisses in the Chitauri's alien tongue mixing with the familiar whining roar of Tony's repulsors. Loki's heart lifts abruptly in his chest until he can feel it beating in his throat, and he stares hard at the cluster of melee until he spots the bright flash of a red-gold limb. Tony. Tony's been captured - but he's still alive, still fighting.

For now. At least a dozen of the aliens are on him, dragging him out to the center of the field, holding him down. Tony thrashes and kicks, but his power reserves have been drained and his ammo completely depleted - he's got nothing left to blast his way free with. But they can't get at him, either; Tony's engineering and Loki's wards still hold, and the smooth carapace of his armor defeats all their weapons and their prying hands.

"Tony!" Loki screams, his voice whipping away in the cacophony of the fighting. He redoubles his efforts against his own band of captors, but he can't make any headway against the crowd. " _Tony!"_

Suddenly, without any signal that Loki can see, the chaos stops. Like a wave, all the aliens in the crowd stop what they're doing and turn towards the central tower (although not to the extent of loosing their holds, Loki finds out as he continues to struggle.) The slab of rock serving as a doorway to the tower groans open, and a figure emerges from within.

It (he?) is not a Chitauri, not like any of the myriad races that Loki has learned about. He's huge, perhaps ten feet tall and half that broad, built like a mountain. His skin is the dull red color of cooling lava, and his eyes - when they turn to gaze upon the suddenly small, red-armored figure struggling on the ground before him - his eyes are like the death of stars.

"So this is one of Midgard's heroes," the figure says in a deep, resonant voice. He says something else but Loki can't quite make it out; he throws everything he has into freeing himself, suddenly terrified of what will happen if he doesn't get free right _now_ get to Tony's side right _now now now -_

The red-skinned giant makes a negligent gesture with one hand, and Tony's form convulses nearly off the ground. Then it falls limp, and a gush of red blood erupts from the chinks and cracks of the armor, leaking out onto the frozen ground.

There is a rune on the skin of his chest that mirrors the one he drew on Tony's in the quiet of the night, when their skin pressed bare on each other. It is tied to Tony's heartbeat, a thread of invisible magic that stretches shimmering between them, and he feels it _pop_ now like the bursting of a bubble, the snapping of a thread.

Gone. Vanished. _Stopped._

For a moment Loki cannot believe it - cannot bring himself to accept as truth what his eyes (what his heart) tell him. Tony can't be _dead,_ cannot be, cannot be...

A scream is building in Loki's chest, from the very depths of his ribcage up to shred his throat. The world spins in a roaring swirl of vertigo around him, and Loki cannot see anything (but the sight of that gush of blood) cannot feel anything (but the snapping of that thread) and he reaches down, _down_ into the innermost depths of himself -

Ever since Loki came to Midgard, he's made little to no effort to tap into his frost giant nature. He knows of it, he used it in the battle against Heimdall, but he still hates it and wished nothing more to bury it within him forever. So it is without any conscious effort now that Loki taps into something in himself, a core so deep that he never knew it existed before, reached with a completely unconscious effort in response to his pain. A deep cold, so far beyond numbness that it manifests only as a faint ache. A blue-white well of light that pulses out from his core in a blinding flash.

When it recedes and Loki can see again, all of the Chitauri within a hundred paces of him have ceased to move. When Loki pulls at his arms, the soldiers that were holding him move easily, jerkily with him, their hands cracking open with the slightest motion. Their bodies topple over like mannequins, shattering into gray dust when they strike the ground.

Loki walks through a forest of frozen corpses, a strange cold serenity having settled over him. He feels nothing, not grief, not anger, not even cold. He feels nothing but numb.

He can't see the giant any more; he must have turned away, retreated back into his tower. The armor is sprawled upon the ground, lifeless and ungainly as a broken children's toy; a river of blood sluices away into the nearest drainage ditch, now slowed to a trickle. Loki goes over to its side and kneels down, reaches out and touches the shining red-gold surface. It feels warm under his hands, even though flecks of wind-driven ice are already beginning to catch and hold on the surface.

He could cancel his locking spell now; it failed in its purpose, it's worthless now. He could open Tony's armor and take him out, see what the giant's spell has wrought. He could at least open Tony's faceplate, to look upon his lover's features one last time. But he's too much of a coward for that.

A flash of sickly blue-green light licks upward from the pool of blood - more felt than seen, like a lash of pain across the back of his eyes, Loki doubts that anyone without a sensitivity to magic could have sensed it. But anyone can see what happens next; the shimmering crimson pool lets out a deep gurgle, as though the stopper had been pulled on some massive drain, and then the blood suddenly vanishes abruptly downward into a yawning darkness. The channels and reservoirs drain with a rush into the sudden pit, and an indescribably foul wave of air blasts out the other way.

Loki has been to a half-dozen different planets in his lifetime; walked through swamps, dungeons, slaughterhouses, and through countless raven-stripped graveyards. He has never smelled anything even remotely like this; he doesn't even know where to begin to describe it. Even rot and refuse have traces of life in them, after all, the stench of them merely a transition between one form that was once alive and another form that will be alive again. But this smell, wherever it comes, stinks only of _death_.

A faint sound like the roaring of a subway began from somewhere far off, and grows in volume until the ground around them is shuddering - and then a massive hulking _thing_ hauls itself over the edge of the pit, unfolding rolls of flesh into the air around. Loki would call it _serpentine_ if not for the clumsy limbs that flop and spill all over the clearing - too many limbs, bending in too many ways, he can't even make out their design. Legs? Wings? Both at once? All he can tell is that their tips gouge through the ice and rock of the surfaces around them without even slowing down, as casually as a sword through butter.

The head (it must be a head, it's at the front end, what else can you call it?) is armored with thick, overlapping plates of scale and horn, with patches of pulsing veins running down the sides. It has no eyes that Loki can see, and in fact he cannot even tell at first glance the top from the bottom; instead of two jaws it has four, arranged symmetrically about a central axis that opens wide like a blooming flower.

Loki can't shake the gut-wrenching sensation, as he stares down into what should be the heart of the world, that he's looking _up_ into an endless sky - a sky devoid of sun or star, nothing but darkness stretching back to the conception of the universe.

Its body stretches on and on for miles, long segmented lengths that weirdly bend and double back on themselves in directions that should not be possible - sometimes even crossing over its own space. The horned head and scaled neck rearing above the icy plain were the size of a semi truck when they first crossed the threshold; now, they are as big as a skyscraper, and growing perceptibly bigger with every segment that slides into the world.

It rears back and crashes down, jaws closing upon a knot of Chitauri soldiers - they vanish without a sound into the serpent's maw, and it gouges a huge chunk out of the ice beneath them. Bright light begins to pulse along the monster's veins with the urgency of its feeding, growing to a blinding intensity even as Loki watches.

He is mesmerized by the creature, rooted to the ground and unable to move - until that monstrous head turns towards him. The multi-jointed jaws open wide, emitting a primordial scream of hunger and rage, and inside the creature's maw is - nothing. Far worse than the Void, empty of time and space and life, what exists within the creature is a well of pure _unmaking,_ and it will destroy him beyond all hope of ever regeneration.

Whatever courage he might once have possessed breaks in him, and Loki turns and flees. He leaves all behind him - the field of blood, the burning towers, the stone-skinned giant, Tony's body - leaves it, and escapes into the sanctuary of the secret ways between worlds.

* * *

It has been years since Loki last walked the dark paths, but he has not forgotten the trick of it. It is vital not to focus too much upon any one detail, not to struggle to make sense of everything you see. It helps to be a little mad going in, in fact, so that you will not be completely mad coming out.

The ancients called this "walking the boughs of Yggdrasil," and sometimes it is a little like that: in the feeling of rough bark beneath his fingers and feet, in the smell of water and dust as he pulls himself from one branch to the next. But at times it is also like a shadow-veiled labyrinth of bridges and stairs leading in all directions - in _all_ directions, sideways and upside-down and in and out at once. Somewhere in the shadows beside the bridges and stairs, plunging down into unfathomable depths, rise tall pillars of stone; from their tops, lost in mist and shadow, hang trailers of sweet-smelling herbs.

And at times it is like plunging into a maze of stupendous caverns beneath the earth, vast stygian spaces that stretch away impossibly high and deep. What seem at a great distance to be windows into the worlds - deep undersea vistas, rocky mountains, brilliant starfields - resolve themselves, as he approaches, into blank stone walls. Those are the gaps between Yggdrasil's branches through which one can, with a little practice, slip.

But the glimpses he sees around him now are like visions from a nightmare. Everywhere he sees Midgard burning, the crust of earth cracking open to reveal the ugly painful molten core deep within, the seas rushing in to drown liquid stone and boiling away in a fury. Everywhere he sees the serpent's coils, grown so large now that he can wrap around the Earth itself like a worm-riddled apple, as his terrible maw carves chunks from the Earth's surface a hundred miles wide.

More disconcerting yet are scenes of destruction that he cannot recognize from Midgard at all. He catches a glimpse of a great blue glacier disintegrating, huge chunks cracking off and smashing as mile-high sheets of ice slough off into nothingness. Through another window, a great red star flares and struggles as it is pulled apart by the clutch of a black hole.

The paths themselves seem to share in the agony of Midgard's death-throes; even after he has left the dying planet behind, leaping from branch to branch and stair to stair, he can feel the ground rumbling and shaking beneath his feet. The branches are _swaying,_ as if in some cosmic gale, and the twigs and leaves whisper and crackle to each other in terror and agony.

Loki can barely keep his footing, can barely see where he's going with his eyes still blind from smoke and tears. He had long ago made sure to memorize all of the paths that led in and out of Asgard until he could walk them even in total darkness; that muscle-memory guides his steps on, stumbling uneven over the jolting, quaking ground.

He would have thought it his own weakness that makes him stumble and jolt, until a particularly vicious tremor makes half the stone step break off beneath his feet. To his left, a brilliant vision of an asteroid-studded field suddenly develops a long forked fissure, like a crack in one of Tony's glass screens; from it blows a cold and foul wind.

Loki lunges forward and without warning, he is back in reality again: the ground underneath him is steady, the light bright about him. He lands on his hands and knees and for a moment he just stays there, blinking uncertainly at the world around him like a newborn chick.

Asgard. He is on Asgard again; he recognizes the plaza at the near-end of the Rainbow Bridge. From here, a golden avenue runs straight through the heart of the city, ending at Odin's shining castle; it's a sight he never thought he would see again except in his dreams. It is here that he and Thor's friends assembled before their disastrous trip to Jotunheim, here that he sent the guard to fetch Odin, too late - here that it all started, years ago. Years ago? Has it truly been that long? It seems at once the blink of an eye, and a lifetime.

"Loki!" His name precedes a pelter of silken skirts, and a cloud of achingly familiar scent surrounds him as his mother runs up and envelops him in a fierce embrace. Automatically his arms go around her, but his eyes still stare blankly, unseeing.

Warm tears hit his shoulder, and his mother weeps as she babbles in his ear how much she loves him, how much she missed him, how frightened she was for him. It is a warmth and safety he thought he would never know again after he fell from Asgard; and yet still he cannot feel anything but numb.

"Brother!"

Loki looks up and blinks his eyes clear as he sees his brother advance on him in a cloud of gold and red fury. His father follows, meaning their family is complete again; and it only took the end of the world to make it happen. Heimdall stands nearby, ever-vigilant at the end of the shattered Bridge where he can look off into the starry gulf below. He can watch, but he cannot act; never has Loki felt more sympathy with the Gatekeeper.

"Fath- All-Father," Loki gasps, struggling to his feet. "What was that... thing?"

"Nidhogg," Odin says, his voice as grim and stark as a funeral bell. Loki is suddenly reminded that his father is, among other things, he who presides over executions. "The Unmaker, the great wyrm in the dark of Yggdrasil's heart. His great hunger can never be sated, for all that he devours turns to nothing in his maw, and his malice is without bound. Eons ago he was imprisoned in Nidafjöll, buried beyond the horizon from which no light escapes; he should _never_ have been able to escape, not until the end of days."

"And yet he has," Heimdall responds. "Thanos, the Mad Titan, has called him from his prison. He winds all of Midgard now in his coils."

"Madness," Odin mutters, faint with shock. "Madness. How could we ever foreseen he would attempt something so reckless, for no greater purpose than love of destruction itself?"

"Loki!" Thor crowds him, seizing his shoulder and yanking him out of his mother's embrace so that Thor can loom over him menacingly. "You came from Midgard, did you not?" Thor demands, and his voice is ravaged and furious. "You escaped the destruction - you escaped! Why could you not bring Jane Foster with you?"

Loki almost wants to laugh: how incredibly selfish of Thor, to worry over the fate of one woman while an entire world burns. At the same time he is furious enough to snap back - "If I could have brought but one mortal out of the conflagration, _dear brother_ , I promise you that _she_ would not have been my first choice."

Thor flinches back, a guilty look haunting his face; clearly it hadn't occurred to him before now that Loki might mourn the loss of Midgard as much as he himself. His mouth hardens. "Very well," he says. "I will go to Midgard myself and destroy this beast -"

"No!" Frigga catches at Thor's arm with one hand, the other still around Loki, as frantic as a mother hen striving to shelter too many chicks from a storm. "Thor, you cannot! In Nidhogg's fangs lies your certain doom!"

Both brothers stare, caught off guard by Frigga's uncommon bluntness in this matter. It is easy to forget sometimes that Frigga has sight of the fates of men, for she never speaks of what she sees - never before now. Her declaration of danger now is not motherly anxiety, but sure prophecy.

But Thor will not be so easily dissuaded. "So long as the beast may share in my fate, and thus spare the innocents of Midgard, I care not," he says, and turns to Odin. "Father, I beg you. Send me to battle!"

"It is too late," Heimdall's deep voice enters the conversation. The watchman stands at the border of Asgard, his eyes trained on the starry depths below. "Even if you were to slay the wyrm, it is too late to save Midgard now."

"Then I will at least die by her side!" Thor shouts, and despite all that has happened between them, Loki's heart still aches at his brother's despair. Would ache, if there were any part of him left free from the heavy crushing pain of Tony's death.

Slowly, their king and father shakes his head. "I have long known that I might someday need to lose you to necessity," Odin replies heavily, words slow and solemnly. "But I cannot agree to lose you to futility."

Thor curses, and whirls to confront Loki once more. "If you will not send me, then I will go myself!" he says. "Loki, show me the dark routes you came from in your flight from Midgard - I will brave them! What left have I to lose?"

"I will not enter the dark paths again, not now," Loki says, climbing clumsily to his feet. "I _dare_ not. Father - I have been on the pathways of Yggdrasil before, and never have I seen anything like it. The dark paths were _shaking_ , crumbling under my feet as I climbed. What could possibly happen to cause that?"

A deathly silence follows his words. Frigga gasps and goes pale, and Odin takes her hand, squeezing tight as he exchanges a worried glance with her.

"It is not only out of kindness for the mortals that Asgard has always safeguarded and watched over Midgard," Odin says slowly. "Midgard is only one of the nine realms, yet its position is the greatest - it lies at the heart of the hub, the keystone on which all Yggdrasil rests. Without Midgard, the Great Tree will wither and die - and the rest of the Nine Realms will fall."

"It has already begun," Heimdall reports, his voice remote and emotionless. "Without the pillar of Midgard to brace them, already Jotunheim and Niflheim have begun to slide out of their proper place; they will soon boil dry in the unaccustomed heat of an unfamiliar star. The other Realms have not much longer to wait."

Odin goes white as his beard, falling back at the news. Without another word he whirls around and hurries off, calling for Sleipnir and pulling himself up onto the great steed's back without breaking his stride. Frigga looks back at her sons, hesitating in anguish, but quickly hastens after her husband.

"What will he do?" Thor asks, apprehension clouding his voice. "What _can_ he do?"

"He goes to the great throne of Hlidskjalf, there to do what he can to stabilize Asgard, even if the limb of Yggdrasil that suspends us should falter," Heimdall reports. After a pause he adds, "I fear it will not be enough."

It starts with the air. A sudden flicker, a change in the quality of the light above - and the air rushes past them with a scream of newfound freedom, tearing past them in a gale that rips trees from their roots. They are left gasping in the windstorm, with air suddenly as thin as that upon the highest mountain's peak.

From far below them, there is a muffled _crack_ like the breaking of bone, and the entire island gives a little jump. Loki thinks at first that the bottom dropping out of his stomach is only his own sickness, but from the way the others stagger about he soon realizes this is not so. The landscape about them shifts sickeningly, tiles tilting up crazily as the ground beneath heaves and swells, and from far away they can hear the rush of water as the ocean leaps up from its confinement. Without the supportive embrace of Yggdrasil's boughs, the laws of physics that were particular to this realm of space are becoming unbound, one by one.

Falling, Loki realizes. Asgard is falling from the sky.

From the central palace Loki can sense flares of magic, rising and falling as Odin struggles to re-impose order upon the crumbling world. The ground beneath them begins to shake, and a series of deep snapping noises sounds from the deep undersides of the island. The skyline begins to heave and tilt, buildings crashing into each other and crumbling under their own weight as the bedrock beneath them fractures apart. Very distantly, Loki can hear the first screams.

Thor whirls to face him, expression distorted with frustration. " _Do something!"_ he screams, seizing Loki's shirt in his hands.

 _"Like what?"_ Loki snarls back, yanking free from his brother's grasp. There is nothing he can do; if Odin with all the magics of Asgard behind him cannot stabilize the realm from the center, then there is nothing that Loki - _outsider, adopted, outcast -_ can hope to do from the fringes.

Thor makes a noise, the strangled, aborted beginnings of a curse. Or perhaps a sob. Tears stream down his twisted face into his beard; a picture of helpless grief, a warrior rendered powerless to save that which he loves. It is the second time in Loki's life that he has seen such despair on his brother's face - and this time, Loki didn't even have to lie.

"Prince Thor, many buildings in the city are collapsing, and there are people trapped in the wreckage," Heimdall reports, casting a fleeting glance back towards the writhing hulk of Asgard. "Your people are in need of your aid."

For one moment Thor hesitates, wavering between Loki and the city; then he is off in a rush, twirling his great hammer before launching himself into the air.

"What difference does it make?" Loki whispers to the space he left behind.

"For one such as Thor, it is better that he meet his end on his feet, striving until the last moment even if every effort is in vain," Heimdall explains. "If he can give comfort to any in our last moments, then he will be comforted himself, and that is all that we can hope for."

"And you, Gatekeeper?" Loki asks. "Do futile heroics fail to bring you such comfort? Is it truly better to spend your last minutes bandying words with an enemy and a traitor?"

His heavy gold gaze moves to Loki, and there is such empty resignation in them that Loki's heart nearly breaks. "Prince Loki, we have been enemies in the past, but this day is beyond all such squabbles," he says quietly. "If I could spy any safe harbor in any of the realms that you might flee to, I would tell you of it and bid you go, even if you could carry with you no other. At least then someone might remember us and tell our stories beyond death, and so bring us some form of immortality.

"But there is none to be found, not here nor in any Realm. I am sorry."

The gatekeeper turns slowly and strides away, towards the quaking city, and Loki can only watch him go. He keeps on watching until, with a roar, the great edifice of the palace collapses, sending clouds of dust and debris streaming trails into the sky.

It was only ever a matter of time. Yet without the All-Father's bracing magics, the time grows short indeed.

The icy numbness which gripped Loki from the moment of Tony's death at last begins to recede. He wishes it wouldn't, because in its place creeps in icy terror, rising like the seawater that is even now beginning to wash over the tiles. It's deceptively gentle and shallow at first, but an inch deeper every second, and an ominous white froth beads the edges of the eddies.

With a great grinding noise the courtyard tiles suddenly crack and subside, falling into a deep pit that drills straight through the heart of Asgard. The water abruptly diverts into this sudden open pit, roaring angrily as it surges and froths into a whirlpool. Loki backs away automatically, his feet scuffing over the trembling ground as he seeks some refuge. His heels bump against the first step of the Bifrost, as yet solid and untouched by the furor, and he scrambles up onto the gleaming crystal.

From this vantage it is all too plain to see the cataclysm that is claiming his childhood home. Loki continues to back away, retreating down the span of the gleaming glass Bridge that once spanned to other worlds. The bridge creaks beneath his feet, groaning as the churning water undermines its foundations; Loki feels the nothingness that he knows lies beneath his feet, and a cold sweat breaks out along his back.

The horror of that first fall still sears in his memory, but at least it is a terror he _knows,_ and it can hardly be worse than what lies behind him.

In the next moment the choice is made for him. The Bifrost cracks and splinters, as it once had under the force of his brother's hammer. There is nothing under his feet. What follows is not a heart-stopping plunge, for the gravity of this world is failing as the land fails; but as inexorably as the water rises, Loki falls.

Loki falls, and the Void swallows him.

 

~to be continued...

* * *

 


	3. The God Who Cried Wolf [honesty]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki is traumatized, Thor is stubborn, and Odin has entirely the wrong priorities.

Loki falls, and he knows it will be a fall with no ending.

All of the Nine Realms are destroyed, they are broken, burning, crumbling in on themselves to satiate Nidhogg's hunger. He can still see flashes of it before his eyes as he falls - Midgard cracked and torn asunder, flame gouting up from the deepest cracks, the hungry water of the sea rushing in to fill the bottomless gulf. Flashes, flashes: Asgard in ruins, the throne room crumpling like tin, flashes, people running, people screaming, flashes, the mountain falling from the sky -

There is nothing left. Nothing left to go back to, nothing left, nothing left at all. Everyone he loved is dead (and so is everyone he hated.)

Why did he flee from the cataclysm? Why, why, why did he run, instead of choosing to stand with them and die like a warrior (family) should? What did he hope to accomplish, bolting like a coward when there is _no where_ left for him to go, no distant shore that he can reach, no safe harbor, no more land at all -

(Can he even die like this?)

There are, Loki vaguely knows, worlds outside the Tree - these Chitauri certainly had not come from any of the Nine. He studied them in a life now shattered behind him as nothing more than the vaguest intellectual curiosity, in the libraries of Asgard. They were outside of the All-Father's jurisdiction, and had little to offer the people of Asgard, since the creatures that inhabited them were so strange as to be often incomprehensible. The Nine Realms were bound together by ties of culture, of fate and of kin, and all that had ever been of interest to any of them sheltered below its branches. Where to go, now that those branches have fallen?

Where to go, ever? All he had loved and hated - all he had planned and plotted, desired and despised, lies now in ashes behind him. There is nothing for him now - at best, an eternity of creeping through strange alien tunnels, ever at the fringes, without a house or a homeland to call on for protection. He will be forever excluded, forever the outcast, forever alone.

When he crashed upon Midgard after his first fall from the Bifrost he'd told himself that he was done with Asgard forever, that he wanted no more of its gaudy hypocrisy. He now recants his bitterness with all his heart, wishing and yearning with every fiber of his being to see the great golden city just one more time, before he dies. It shines so brightly in his mind's eye, against the darkness of the Void, that he thinks he can reach out and touch it _just once more -_

Around him, the darkness heaves and churns.

_\- just one more time -_

The ether reaches shudder and unwind, rushing away past him without a sound.

_\- just one more chance -_

Abruptly the fall jerks to a stop and reverses, sightless currents of nothingness blasting past his face as he flies, fast and faster, towards -

_\- to make things right -_

His hand grabs onto something solid, and with that anchor he pulls himself heaving to solid land.

The swell of the void sinks behind him with a guttural roar, and Loki finds himself suddenly holding to a stone outcropping upon a steep stone face, with water pouring down and around his head and shoulders. The top of the cliff is not far away, but Loki is as weak as a newborn animal, and the shaking palsy of his limbs combines with the slipperiness of the stone to almost defeat him.

When at last he gains the top of the slope, and drags himself like a wet rat out of the course of the stream and onto the bank, his strength is done. He collapses onto his hands and knees in the sandy soil, then pitches over on his side - it takes great effort not to fall right on his face - and heaves great breaths.

At length, he summons up the strength to roll over on his back, staring up at the sky of whatever strange new world he'd found himself in. It's near dusk, and the stars overhead shine in vast swaths of myriad colors.

His breath stops, held back by disbelief and an overpowering spasm of hope.

The stars - these are _Asgard's_ stars.

And on the horizon at the very limit of his vision, glimmering in the growing dusk, is the golden skyline of his home.

* * *

Loki gets only as far as the nearest road before the escort catches up with him, horse's hooves clattering along the verge in an armada of flashing armor and antlered helmets. It's no surprise, really; Heimdall's vision cannot penetrate the Void, but there is nothing that passes the borders of Asgard that he does not see. For an arrival as portentous as his, of course guards would be dispatched immediately to investigate.

But it's the sight of the tall man on the black warhorse, leading the party, that makes Loki's heart leap with joy; the blond man with the electric blue gaze and the thunderous frown. "Thor!" Loki cries out, and surges forward to clasp his hand, cling to the edge of his stirrup as his eyes drink in the sight. "You're alive!"

Thor draws his horse to a halt and looks down in bafflement, his brows drawing together in that heartstoppingly familiar expression when some puzzle is escaping him. "Alive? Of course I am," he says, turning in his saddle to reach down and catch Loki's wrists. "Why would I not - it is _you_ who have been missing, Loki, we thought you dead!"

"You are alive, you are unhurt," Loki chants, completely ignoring Thor's irrelevancies. "Asgard still stands - is the battle over, then? The great worm is defeated?"

"Battle? There has been no battle," Thor says, startled alarm at the thought that there could be a _battle_ that he had yet missed. "All has been calm and well in Asgard since - since you fell," he stutters into silence, as though remembering it will make it so again.

Loki stares. "But what of the attack on Midgard?" he demands. "The world tree, Yggdrasil - I felt it die. Asgard broke on its foundations, the seas rose, I saw it happen, I _saw_ it -"

Thor is staring at him now with an entirely different species of alarm. "Loki, there has been no attack on Midgard," he says finally. "Nothing has happened. Nothing is ill. Have you been dreaming?"

"Have I?" Loki stumbles to a halt, suddenly shaken in his perception of things. All this was destroyed, he _saw_ it happen - and yet here is the ground beneath his feet, undoubtedly solid and whole, with no evidence of any damage. Was it all a dream, then, a hideous vision? And if so, was it merely a nightmare - or a warning?

"Come, Loki, you must return with us at once," Thor says in his extra-serious voice, the one he gets when he is highly aware of his ceremonial duties as crown prince. "You have much to answer for, in the matter of the Destroyer, and the assault on Jotunheim -"

"Thor," Loki says slowly, interrupting his brother's train of declamation. "What day is it?"

Those guileless blue eyes blink at him. "Tyrstag," he answers.

"No, I mean, what is the date?" Loki snaps, and draws a ragged breath to steady himself. Thor only looks at him uncomprehending. "How long - how long has it been since I fell?"

"Why... it has been just under six months since the Bifrost was broken," Thor says slowly. "Loki - Loki, we thought you dead."

Loki reels, clutching his head as though he can hold the past and present together and stop it all from slithering apart. Six months - _six months!_ Six months after his fall from Asgard he'd been sipping wine in a fancy establishment in Amsterdam, conjuring Midgardian money and papers for himself. Six months after his fall, he hadn't even met Tony Stark for the first time yet.

Six months after his fall, the Tesseract had not yet been stolen, the portal had not yet been opened, and the tree had not yet been reft from its roots by Nidhogg's cruel fangs.

"I must see Fa- Odin," Loki says, his voice shaking. "I must see him at once. I have to tell him - I have to warn him."

Thor gives him a look which combines confusion and exasperation and deep suspicion all in one. "That is what I have been telling you you must do," he says with great asperity. "Do not try to escape, Loki, the guards have orders to stop you if you try."

Guards? Loki looks around disinterestedly at the escort; it only now occurs to him that they have anything other than a ceremonial function. "Yes, yes, of course," he says distractedly. "Do you have a horse from me? I'd rather not walk back to the palace, if it's all the same to you."

It's a stiff and uncomfortable ride back to the palace for everyone in the party except Loki; he can't stop from staring at the city around him, miraculously restored when he had thought all to be lost. There is the bend in the road that leads to the market square, quiet now but still with the lingering whiffs of fragrance from its busy stalls. Here is the green sward that runs along the road to the palace, and the hedges where he played as a child; there is the rowan tree with broad, low limbs that were perfect for climbing in when he was small, and later for perching and reading. The sharp downwards slant of the road beneath his feet as it plunges towards the palace gate; he knows the angle of it, the very sound of the cobbles crunching under his feet, better than he knows his times-tables.

It's all _here_ and so very alive and unbroken and Loki can't stop smiling, overflowing with joy and relief. Others who stop and stare at the procession can't help but gawk at him, and Loki imagines he must be quite a sight: unarmed and unarmored in the escort of so many warriors, clothing rumpled and hair wildly askew, grinning like a loon. They must think him deranged, but Loki can't bring himself to care.

It's all right. It's all right. Everything is going to be all right.

* * *

Odin frowns down at him from his golden throne, tall and golden and harsh in his kingly regalia; Thor stands at his right hand, bristling with suspicion and restrained violence. Frigga is conspicuously absent.

This was not the reunion he was expecting. Indeed, he hardly knew _what_ to expect; his last homecoming had been much more heart-felt. But then again, that had been on the brink of ruin, when the brutal necessity of those last final hours had burned away all but the most heart-essential of words. The House of Odin is under no such deadline now (but they are, _they are_ and they don't even _know -)_ and has plenty of time to dwell on wounds and wrongs. Indeed, to _this_ version of Asgard it has been a scarce handful of months since Loki fell - not nearly enough time to smooth over the jagged edges of all that was broken between them.

Any other day he would have snarled back at them, returning their hostility full measure for measure; but on this day he does not have _time_ for that. He bears a warning that must not be ignored or dismissed.

Alone with the king in private, Loki will tell him everything; but here, in the eye of all the courtiers who have no true understanding of magic, perhaps he should keep it simple. He will speak of the future as it is planned, not the past as it has been experienced.

"All-Father," Loki says, clearing a suddenly thick throat. He cannot bring himself to say _Father_ , at least not yet, perhaps never again. But this is business for a king. "I come to you with grievous tidings of danger from beyond the realms."

"We have not come here today to hear tidings," Odin says. "Loki Odinson, this court has gathered today to discuss the implications of your actions that led to the assault on Jotunheim and the subsequent destruction of the Bifrost. In doing so, you have abused the trust that was shown to you by granting you the use of Gungnir, access to the weapons vault, and command of the Bifrost..."

In truth he's barely listening to Odin's words, droning on about unimportant things when he has an urgent message he must tell. "My king, listen," Loki says, jumping in on the first available pause. "I have learned of an army of vicious marauders planning an attack on Midgard. They have stolen a lost treasure of Asgard to aid them in the opening of a portal from the deep reaches of space to the coldest reaches of Earth. The mortals will not be able to fend off the attack without our aid!"

"Do not try to change the subject," Odin says severely. "As you know, it is our solemn duty as the guardians of the Nine Realms to see that these most powerful of treasures not only be guarded, but also that the innocent must be guarded from their power. In your recklessness, you committed egregious assault on two realms: Jotunheim, in an outrageous attempt to commit slaughter upon its people; and Midgard, in pursuit of your unsanctioned use of the Guardian to attack other citizens of Asgard - "

"As Guardians of the Nine Realms," Loki interrupts him impatiently, "we have an obligation to protect them and, by extension, all the Realms from this new threat! They mean to summon an ancient horror, Nithhogg, to tear out the heart of Midgard. Midgard and Jotunheim will not be the only realms to suffer -"

Odin keeps on talking as though Loki made no sound at all, churning steadily and inexorably through a speech that must have been long-rehearsed. "- In doing so, you have tarnished the reputation of Asgard in the eyes of the other realms, caused the death and destruction of innocents on two realms, and caused damage to the structure and stability of Asgard itself -"

"- if this heinous plan comes to pass; countless innocent lives from every realm will be wiped out, and the _structure_ and _stability_ of Asgard itself will be _destroyed!"_ Loki shouts, his voice overriding Odin's at last. Volume at last serves where reason would not, at least to break Odin's concentration and get his attention. "Are you even paying attention _at all?!"_

"Loki, what is this nonsense?" Odin asks, irritably bewildered. "Nithhogg - how do you even know that name? It is an ill portent to speak of it. Nithhogg is safely bound beneath the roots of the Tree, as he has been for ages past."

"Yes, he _is,_ until he _isn't_ any more!" Loki nearly screams with frustration; why will his father not _see?_ "I told you, Thanos comes at the head of an army, he has drawn a summoning sigil in the ice of Midgard, I _told_ you -"

"Enough!" Odin booms, and slams his staff to the tiled floor, the echoing _crack_ punctuating his command. "Enough of these attempts at distraction and delay, Loki; you will not be permitted to derail these proceedings. We have come here today to discuss your misdeeds, and the penalties for them -"

Loki sets his teeth, lips drawing back. "And after we're _through_ with that, will you listen to what I have to say?" he demands impatiently.

"After, well, yes, after -" Odin starts, but Loki interrupts him.

"Then let us _have done_ with it!" Loki yells, and his voice overpowers even Odin's. " _Yes,_ I let the Frost Giants into Asgard on Thor's coronation day! Yes, I sent the Destroyed to kill Thor! Yes, I killed King Laufey and turned the Bifrost on Jotunheim! _Is there anything else that we need to discuss here?"_

His voice rings around the room like a bell, and for a moment Odin and all the assembled nobles are stunned silent by the force of it. Whatever they were expecting to hear from Loki - some clever prevarication, perhaps, or an intricate web of denials - this was not it.

Odin recovers first, fumbling for his composure. "There... there is still the matter of a potent artifact that was removed from the treasure vault," he begins tentatively.

"You want it back?" He makes a gesture with his hands, summons the Casket from its hiding place between dimensions, and drops it on the floor at Odin's feet. It is far heavier than its size would indicate, and the _boom_ from its impact shakes the walls. _"It's yours!_ Are we finished!?"

Honestly, Loki has not even thought of the Casket of Ancient Winters again in all the time since he'd fallen from the Bifrost; he had not _wanted_ to think of it, buried it in the same part of his mind that hid all knowledge and memory of his true, loathed blood. If he had remembered, if he had thought of bringing it out in Midgard's defense when the Chitauri came, if only, if only - but it's too late for that now.

Odin is staring at him in real alarm now, all hint of the severe and kingly mask fled. Loki can only wonder what his his face looks like right now. He clears his throat. "Clearly, my son, you are still distressed and overwrought from your passage between worlds," he declares. "I... perhaps it would be best to put aside issues of justice and judgment, until you have settled in and recovered somewhat from your ordeal."

Loki rolls his eyes, even as the court bursts into excited chatter around them. That's what he's been _saying._

At last Odin clears the hall, dismisses the court and the spectators with a brusque gesture; draws Loki aside to a small audience chamber out of view of all the rest. Thor makes to follow them, but Odin rebuffs him with a jerk of his chin and an irritated snarl; the door closes fast behind them, leaving him with only Odin and one of his closest counselors.

_Finally._

"What has happened to you, my son?" Odin asks, his voice shaky.

"Many things, Father," Loki says softly. "I fell between worlds. I made a new life far away from here, only to see it crumble around me. I saw Midgard destroyed, eaten from within. I saw Asgard -" His voice cracks, and he takes a deep breath to try to steady his trembling voice. "I saw Asgard fall from the sky."

"Tell me of these visions," Odin murmurs encouragingly. Loki takes a deep gulp of air, and begins to tell his story.

It's harder than he had expected. He hasn't had time to think through or rehearse this story, so he starts in the wrong place at first, then keeps having to backtrack and explain things. Midgard. Tony. SHIELD. The Tesseract. The death of Erik Selvig, and his suspicions at the time about Chitauri spies.

Then he comes to the events of the last dawn, and finds himself bogged down in a morass of treacherous, violent emotions. It was one thing to think upon the horrors he had seen, to look at them in his mind with a calm objectivity; it is another thing entirely to open his mouth and speak them aloud, to make them real again in his mouth and ears. He finds himself shaking with reaction before he is halfway through, and several times he must stop and grip his own knees to his chest tightly, breathing sharply through his nose for calmness before he can continue.

It gets harder when he comes to the point in the story where the Unmaker appeared; for all the creature's image is burned into his mind - bright fluorescent spots on the backs of his eyelids, like the shadow of a man left on the wall after the explosion has passed - he fumbles and falters when he tries to put it into words. "I _saw_ the creature, it was so bright - so blinding when it - how can a creature that comes from so deep a darkness be so bright, Father?"

"Those beings that exist in dimensions beyond our own have their own rules, which make a mockery of our own," Odin sighs. "It is dangerous to look upon them for too long - even the minds of the Aesir can be damaged from it."

"I hadn't planned to make a habit of it," Loki quips, a feeble attempt to regain his usual acid mockery. It subsides quickly, though, in the face of that scintillating memory, the drowning dread that accompanied it. "I can't - it can't be allowed to - _we_ can't let this happen. You have to stop it from getting free..."

"It will not be allowed to wreak havoc on the realms," Odin tells him firmly. "You have my word on that."

Loki clings to that promise, to that hope. "You - you'll stop the invasion, right? You will send our warriors to Midgard, to the cold continent, to stand against them? We have to warn the mortals, we have to... we have to establish an outpost, we should... you'll help?"

There's a brief pause, and then Odin says: "Yes, Loki. I will do all those things."

Loki takes a breath - what feels like his first breath in days, cool and clear and sweet. The tension and terror unwinds itself from the back of his neck, from its spiral down its spine, releases his guts from its iron-hard clinch. To his mingled surprise and embarrassment, he finds himself crying in pure relief, tears sliding down his cheeks and falling on the weathered backs of his father's hands. He presses his own hands against his face, hiding like a child, and those strong, familiar hands reach up to stroke the crown of his head. Odin's hand pauses on the back of his neck, warm and heavy, cradling him close.

"I promise you, son," Odin assures him somberly. "You need no longer fear."

* * *

His mother comes to see him later that evening, when Loki has been left alone, stumbling with exhaustion, in his own chambers. She enfolds him in her embrace, crying, and Loki can't imagine why, not when all that was wrong with the world has been set right.

"Why do you weep, Mother?" Loki asks her softly, struggling to keep his eyes open. He's not sure when last he slept - not for the days of the invasion nor for an uncounted time in the void after. "I am here; I am all right."

Frigga draws his head between her hands and kisses him on the forehead; one tear drops down on his hairline. "Too many women in this world must accept that someday, their sons will go on to the next world without them," she says, voice wavering heavy with tears. "A mother's heart must bear that. But no mother's heart can ever bear the knowledge that her child sent himself their willingly."

Loki's breath catches, and a pang of his mother's pain seems to shoot from her heart to his. He feels remorse, knowing that his actions have hurt her so; for him it had been long enough that the pain of bitterness had begun to heal, but for her it was not so.

"I'm sorry," he whispers. "I never meant to cause you sorrow, of everyone in the Nine Realms."

"I didn't think you did." She draws back, enough that he can see the fire burning in her eyes, the stubborn set of the jaw. "Promise me," she says fiercely. " _Promise me_ never to give me such reason to grieve again."

"I promise, Mother," he says obediently, and she pulls him close again with a soft cry. Loki lets the sound of his mother's voice surround him, and closes his eyes to sleep.

* * *

In the months to follow, Loki settles back into his life at Asgard. Or - so he tries.

The first few weeks are rocky. There's still the overwhelming relief - the _joy_ at seeing all the places (and people) well and whole, when Loki knows they should be dead. Yet even seeing the truth of their wholeness with his own eyes, Loki cannot be rid of the specter of destruction that waits in the darkness behind every blink, every nightfall.

It had all happened fast, so fast, too fast for him to really see everything (although he had seen _everything_.) So many of the details had been lost in the sheer overwhelming shock of the moment, one individual horror buried in an avalanche of horrors. He had seen it happen - seen Midgard wracked with fire, the earth's crust cracking open, the seas boiling; he had seen Asgard falling, the buildings crumbling, the water rising. He had watched billions of people die but he hadn't really _seen_ it.

He sees it now, every night in dreams; little details that haunt his sleep, the faces and the screams of the dying. He dreams he is trapped, crushed beneath the rubble of Stark tower, while yards away from him the red-skinned giant slowly cuts Tony apart and he can do _nothing_. Blood pours over the ground, rising inch by inch until it covers him, drowning and choking, and he cannot escape -

From those dreams he awakens with a start, freezing and burning and shaking like a leaf and with his stomach crawling to the roof of his mouth to escape. He thinks: I _can fix this, I can fix this, I can make this never be._ It had all happened so _fast_ , there was no time to formulate a strategy to fight back, no time to do anything at all. But he has been granted a second chance and he will use it; he will stop the Chitauri from ever coming, he will defeat Thanos, he will make things right.

When he wakes he sends for Odin, his thoughts racing, wracking his brains for every tiny detail of time and place and movement he can possibly recall. Intelligence is the most vital component of strategy, and he must tell Odin everything he knows - everything he can possibly remember - in order to craft tactics that will defeat the mad titan and his gruesome army. Odin comes when he calls, and listens to him with grave attention, absorbing every detail of the disastrous attack on Midgard. He reassures Loki, when he asks, that the preparations are coming along well: he is preparing an assault force even as they speak, stockpiling the dark energy that will be needed to send them to Midgard with the Bifrost broken. All will be ready in good time, all will be well.

Loki thinks, his father was the mightiest of Asgard's warriors in time; now he is older, but no less formidable, his strength tempered with deep wisdom and long experience. Odin will be able to stop Thanos if anyone can. And thus reassured, he can return to slumber and even stay there for a few hours.

* * *

The memories do not confine themselves to sleep. Sometimes even in the bright light of day he will look at a familiar building of Asgard, and then in a flash all will light up and he will watch the building crumple, broken down like flimsy tin, crushing those caught within. He takes to staying within his chambers, avoiding those whose violent deaths will play out before his mind's eye. They whisper behind his back, around corners, he can hear them all too well; they speculate that he hides in his chambers because he is being punished by the All-Father for his crimes, or out of shame.

Even in his own sanctuary, he cannot be at ease; he startles easily, jumping like a frog on a hot surface at any unexpected noise or movement. He cannot help the irrational certainty that every movement out of the corner of his eye will be a tear in the world, ready to let those _things_ back through. His nervousness manifests itself in anger; he snaps at the servants who so often startle him, driving them from his presence in a rage... only to burst into helpless tears once alone.

He tries to bury himself in his old study habits, his books and notes, but he cannot concentrate on any of them. He seeks more powerful spells, battle-spells that he can use to fight alongside Odin's troops on Midgard - yet each time the magic slips from his shaking fingers, and he cannot cast so much as the smallest cantrip. He must do better, he must do more; he cannot stand to hang back uselessly while others do the fighting for him. _Never again._

His thoughts turn constantly to Midgard, and - inevitably - to Tony. Logically, rationally, Loki knows that Tony must be _fine -_ as hale and healthy as Thor, Odin, Heimdall, any of the others that Loki saw die and yet miraculously are alive once more. The Chitauri have not yet opened their portal, Thanos has not yet come to Midgard (and if Loki has his way, they never will) - so Tony is alive. Tony is well. Tony is fine.

But it is one thing to know it in his head and another thing to accept it in his heart, not after the last glimpse he had of his lover was that broken-doll figure sprawled in a pool of his own blood as Loki fled the scene. He must see with his own two eyes that Tony is all right - smiling, eyes laughing, running his smart mouth as he always does. Only then, he thinks, will the anxious clutch on his heart ease.

At last when he can bear the anxiety no longer, Loki calls Thor to his chambers. His brother comes reluctantly, a surly scowl on his face at being summoned to Loki's whim, but he does come.

"Thor," Loki says. "I must go to Midgard. Will you stay here and oversee the preparations? There are none better suited to lead the warriors on Father's behalf, and you have been there but recently, so you know the territory better than any." When it comes to getting favors out of Thor, a little flattery towards his over-inflated self of sense has never gone awry.

Surprisingly, though, Thor does not preen. Instead he crosses his arms over his chest and stands feet-apart, like an aggressive bulldog. "I will not," he says. "I have no intention of being drawn into your schemes, Loki."

Loki blinks, taken aback. "Schemes, what schemes?" he says. He would be offended and outraged, if he could get over his surprised shock at Thor's refusal to help. "I'm not scheming anything!"

"Verily," Thor says, drawling the word out with deep exaggeration. "No schemes, aye. All these _wild_ tales of Thanos, and Nithhogg, and Yggdrasil, they are _completely_ honest and sincere and not in any way a scheme."

Loki has never known Thor to use sarcasm before, but he does it the same way as he does everything else - with all the subtlety of a pulverizing hammer blow.

"You think I'm lying?" Loki says incredulously. "About _this_ of all things? Of course I'm not lying, you imbecilic -"

Loki catches himself mid-rant, chokes it off. He cannot afford to lose Thor's support in this; his mighty strength would be an invaluable asset against the Chitauri when they come. Loki tries to appeal to his reason, instead. "Why would I be? What could I possibly have to gain from such a thing?"

Thor shakes his head. "I have long since given up trying to understand your wily thoughts, Loki," he says. "The way you think is too different from everyone else. Just because I cannot think of a sensible reason for you to do a thing, does not mean that you will not do it."

Loki gritted his teeth. Of _all_ the times for Thor to lose his gullibility, why did it have to be _now?_ And with his typical hewing to extremes, of course Thor would go from complete credulousness (at least where Loki was concerned) to complete skepticism (at least where Loki was concerned.) Loki would almost be proud of his brother, if only it wasn't so damned _inconvenient right now._

"Okay, so you have doubts, that's fair enough," Loki says, falling back on persuasion, concession. "But we are talking about the _end of all the nine realms_ here. The stakes are far too high for you to take the chance of being wrong. Surely you must realize that?"

"Which is exactly why you would pick such a lie!" Thor says triumphantly, pouncing on this childish deduction as though it is proof of Loki's wrongdoing. "Because you know it would force us to do your bidding."

"I am _not_ -" Loki breaks off, rubbing at the pain starting in his forehead. "Thor, think. Midgard is in danger. All your mortal friends, Jane Foster - "

"Ah, and now you apply your silver tongue to persuade me," Thor says knowingly, folding his arms again. "But the time is past that you can manipulate me to your will, Brother. I will not be fooled into aiding your schemes."

"This 'scheme' is not only of my doing!" Loki snaps. "Odin labors as well to avert this fate - trust in him if if you will not trust in me. He would not muster troops for a battle that is not going to happen, nor dark energy for any small purpose. _He_ believes me!"

"He does not," Thor shoots back in annoyance.

" _What?_ " Loki demands, his voice rising by nearly an octave.

Thor looks caught-out, as though he said something that he knows is forbidden. But he wouldn't be Thor if he were prone to backing down, so he forges onwards. "He is no more fooled by your artifice than I am," he insists. "There are no troops, and there is certainly no dark energy. Why he insists on humoring you I do not know - "

" _Get out!"_ Loki shrieks. Thor looks inclined to stay and argue more, but Loki's agitation is a spark that flares quickly into an all-too familiar fit of rage; he seizes a glass lamp from the bedside and pegs it with vicious speed and accuracy at Thor's head. Only his lightning-quick reflexes save Thor from a faceful of shattered glass, and he prudently retreats to the hallway.

"I'm on to you, Brother!" Thor calls from the corridor, safely behind the wooden-paneled barrier. Loki answers him with nothing but a wordless scream, and follows the first lamp up with another, then sweeps everything breakable he can find onto the floor. By the time the crashing of glass tinkles to a stop, Thor's heavy footsteps and breathing are nowhere to be found.

Breathing harshly, Loki strides over to the windows of his bedroom and yanks the curtains apart, filling his room with the reflected light of Asgard. Damn Thor. _Damn_ Thor, for turning everything that was good and peaceful upside down and inside out with just three words...

Can it be true - that Odin has only been soothing him, humoring him, with no intention whatsoever of carrying through his promises? Thor is incapable of lying, though not of being mistaken - on the other hand, this would hardly be the first time that his adoptive father thought it would be easier to blind him with lies rather than admit unpleasant truths. But Odin is wise and cautious - surely, _surely_ he must know better than to ignore a threat of this magnitude!

Yet, he should be able to see and hear the mustering of troops by now, if it were truly being done with the haste that Odin promised. Should be able to hear the clanking and the shouts as the soldiers drill; should be able to feel the hair rising on the back of his neck as Odin assembles the dark energy deep within the bowels of the palace. He should have noticed it long ago, this telling lack. He should have noticed -

The servants.

He catches the flicker of movement reflected in the glass, sees a pair of them peering worriedly around the doorway at him. He hadn't noticed for so long because they're background color to him, invisible against the humming backdrop of his life. He hadn't noticed for so long because he's been away, years spent on Midgard in Tony Stark's palace which, despite all its numerous luxuries, lacked servants.

But - the servants. _Packs_ of them, hovering around at all times, even after they've been sent away. It never used to be like that before, he remembers; they would come only when called for, and leave when their task was done. Why do they insist on staying so near, at all times? Why do they never leave even when he drives them away?

And then he smells it - medicines, antiseptics and healing magics. Only the faintest of traces, but he'd been smelling it off them for days without noticing it. The pricks and calluses around their fingertips from sewing wounds, the very faint stains of antiseptic wash around their knuckles. Healers, dressed as servants and hovering around his bedside at all hours -

Odin doesn't believe his story, about the invasion and the fall and the wyrm. Odin thinks him _mad._ No wonder his punishment was postponed - not because Odin recognized the greater need at hand, but because Odin thought him unfit to stand trial. Delusional, babbling, too fragile to burden with with honesty; too broken to bring to true justice. _Pitiful._

He wants to scream, to cry, to rage at the stupidity of it and the _waste._ Months gone that could have been spent preparing for war, and still Odin is blind to the threat. But he's wasted too much time on that already, indulging his childish bursts of temper and fits of tears. No doubt that only encouraged Odin in his foolish dismissal of Loki's truthfulness, his reliability as a source of warnings. If only he had been calmer, if only he had told his story better, if only...

Never mind, never mind. It's too late now, Odin is fixed in his folly and _Thor,_ apparently, has set his stubborn head on a course of uselessness. If Loki knows his brother, he will cling so stubbornly to the certainty of Loki's lies that he will continue to insist that it is all a 'trick' until the Tree thrashes in its death throes -

A tremor wracks Loki's body, and his hand fists in the fabric of the curtain. _It won't happen. I won't let it happen. I can fix this._ He still has time - still has time, and he clutches to that knowledge like a floating spar in the rising waters. He spreads his palms and leans his weight against the windowframe, breathing deep and slowly in hopes of capturing some calm.

Something catches the corner of his eye in the window's reflection - no more than a flicker, but the sight of it fills him with a sudden horrible suspicion. He turns sideways, fitting himself between the reflection of his window and the tall silver mirror against his wall. Slowly he turns his head to the side, and pushes the dark hair away from his neck until he sees it.

There. On the nape of neck, where Odin's hand had rested so warmly - the bindrune _isalgiz,_ that which binds power. He thinks of all those fruitless hours spent in the library, fumbling and failing to bring even the tiniest spark of power to his fingertips. For a moment he is blind and breathless with fury.

To think that Odin would do _this_ to him, to _neuter_ him like this, and on the very eve of battle - and not even bother to _tell him_ what he was doing - or why! It is as well that Loki is not in Odin's presence at this moment; he doesn't think he could keep from launching a blow at his false-father. Lies built on the foundation of lies, and when would Odin _learn?_

Loki comes back to himself with the skin of his scalp and neck tingling with pain, clumps of dark hair and faint traces of blood on his fingers. He takes a slow breath and absently wipes the mess away, turning to pace the floor of his chambers in an effort to clear his thoughts.

He will have to leave - he's wasted too much time here already. He can never again rely on his family, that much is plain - can no longer rest in the childlike faith that his parents will come and make everything all right.

If he wants the world saved, he's going to have to do it _himself_.

* * *

Escape from Asgard is not as difficult as it should be.

The first step is to rid himself of his attendants. He starts by adding a new act to his repertoire of symptoms: seizing fits, that last from anywhere between one to five minutes. After each fit, he pretends to fall into a deep, almost trance-like sleep for hours afterwards. In this state, he can hear the healers drop their servile act and discuss his condition over his head in frank terms.

Even during his waking hours, they make less and less pretense of being simple attendants, becoming ever more bossy in regards to directing his movements and how he spends his time. He obeys them pliantly, which only encourages them to be more bold in arranging his days. They brew a calming draught, and bring it to him under the paper-thin excuse of "in case you might be thirsty, my lord." It's actually quite soothing. Were he to stay here longer, it might do him quite a bit of good.

When he judges they have become sufficiently complacent, he stages a seizing fit longer than any of the others, and lets himself be put to bed in a somnolent state. Once the attendants have withdrawn to beyond the screen, it's a simple matter to arrange a convincing silhouette of blankets and pillows in his place, and slip out through the window.

Really, he muses as he strolls across the palace grounds shrouded by shadows, Odin ought to know better than to assume he is powerless and contained just because his _magic_ is bound. There are so many ways to work his will on the world that don't require magic at all, only a long familiarity with the guards' patrol routines and which doors don't quite lock solidly.

He slips back in through a wide window to a set of chambers he knows intimately well; the Lady Freyja's. She's not here, and he knows her habits well enough that if she's not entertaining in her chambers at this hour, she'll be out all night entertaining in someone else's. Really, she hardly ever uses this particular set of rooms in the palace as anything other than extensive wardrobe space.

He strolls over to that truly magnificent wardrobe and despite his leisurely pace, he knows exactly what he's looking for. Within five minutes he's expertly disguised in one of Freyja's floor-length gowns, the fabric tucked and belled in the right places to change his silhouette, a veil to hide his hair and face. A few other items that he thinks may come in handy, while he's here. His own clothes go into interdimensional storage, the same pocket dimension in which he had once hidden the Casket of Ancient Winters, now lying empty. Loki thanks his dubious fortunes that such a spell, once set up, takes no active magic to maintain or access - only the knowledge of where to find it.

The same goes for the hidden paths, too. The dark paths are considered a deep secret of the great mages, and yet the act of walking them really is simplicity itself. If you know where to find the beginnings and the ends - and if, of course, you have the proper mental discipline not to let the things you saw in them drive you mad - anyone at all can walk them, whether a great mage or a lowly mortal.

By the time Loki emerges from Freyja's rooms, to all appearances a humble maid, the alarm is already up. Guards go rushing back and forth along the corridors, searching each dark corner and hidden alcove for the missing mad prince, while Loki strolls casually past with his eyes lowered demurely to the floor.

He pauses once at an open casement, hearing his fa - King Odin's voice echoing down from floors above. Odin is directing his men to guard the Bifrost; the throne room; and the weapons vault, and Loki shakes his head in faint disappointment even as he forces himself to move on past. Even after the Frost Giants invaded their very citadel, still Odin never bothered to learn all the hidden entrances himself? Truly, Odin was getting old.

Loki sees Thor once in a cross-corridor, striding boldly towards the great hall with his jaw jutting out and the Toadies Three flanking him as always. For a moment Loki is almost tempted to change course to intercept them, to see just how far he can get away with fooling them -

But this is no time for games. The fate of nine worlds is depending on him, and with that weight heavy upon his shoulders Loki finds the hidden crack in the universe right where he knew it would be, walks right at the wall and steps through it onto the dark paths.

Walks down, among the creaking boughs and swaying bridges, towards Midgard.

* * *

Loki steps out under the hot glaring sun, squinting into the blinding brightness as the dark paths recede under his feet. He'd chosen the same path as the one he'd taken to visit Thor during his exile on Midgard, and it ends in a terribly brown and boring stretch of desert. Why any mortals willingly choose to live here, Loki cannot guess.

He divests himself of his disguise, changing back into his normal, casual clothes - the plainest he could find in his bedroom, the better not to attract unwanted attention on Midgard. With the flowing dress stowed away out of sight, Loki reaches into his pocket dimension for the one other item he'd taken care to procure from Freyja's wardrobe before he left.

The falcon cloak. Woven from feathers shed from the great hawk Veðrfölnir, this magnificent garment allows even the least magically inclined to change their shape and fly. With his own powers lost to him, Loki had not relished the thought of the days-long trek out of the desert to some semblance of mortal civilization.

He dons the cloak and leaps aloft, the sun reflecting from the hard ground below to create powerful thermals that bear him easily through the air. Sharp falcon's eyes scan the ground below, looking for a clue that will help him start his search. He knows what he seeks - the guardians of the land, those that call themselves SHIELD - but he is not entirely clear on how to find them. They were ever a secretive, paranoid organization, with bases of operation hidden and buried all over this kingdom and yet others that fly through the sky or crawl across their land, hiding themselves through perpetual motion. He does not know how to find them, nor their elusive leader, Nick Fury.

His best bet, Loki reasons, will be to go to a place that he knows SHIELD has been, and find a trail to follow from there. So he wings his way across the sky towards the tiny mortal village (its name escapes him,) where Thor had taken refuge in his own banishment. He remembers seeing, from the high seat at Hlidskjalf and through the eyes of the Destroyer, the glass-walled cottage where Jane Foster and her companions had taken shelter. SHIELD had come there, he remembers, blithely taking her equipment for their own use, a liberty that had outraged the mortal and Thor on her behalf. Perhaps there he will find the clue that he seeks.

The town is easily spotted from the air, a cluster of square dust-colored lumps that huddle around a scratched-out gridwork of streets. The path that the Destroyer left through the center of town is still visible in a dark charred streak along the road and the verge, scorch marks and holes punched in the walls of the buildings left standing; yet the debris has been cleared away, the destroyed buildings reconstructed.

Loki alights on a streetside bench and resumes his form, tucking the feather cloak carefully away into storage for later. It is not yet noon, and the streets are quiet about him; there is no one to see him as he walks across the road to the abandoned building.

The door is locked, but it doesn't even require a pick - let alone magic - to force the metal of the lock and door to give under his hand. Loki lets himself in and closes the door carefully behind him, drawing a deep breath of the cooler air as he straightens and begins to look about, seeking some hint of his quarry.

"So we meet face-to-face at last, Mr. Odinson," a voice says from behind him. "I'd only had the chance to meet you behind that awfully unpleasant armor-creature, before."

Loki spins around, eyes widening as he curses his carelessness. The contrast between the bright sun outside and the dim shadows of the building inside had made the perfect setup for an ambush - and Loki had walked right into it. They were laying in wait for him here, but how? And who?

"I believe you have the advantage of me," Loki says warily, glancing around him as the shadows begin to reveal an entire platoon of men, dressed alternately in formal black-and-white suits or in bodysuits of solid matte black, complete with protective helmets. And a remarkable number of weapons. All pointed at him.

The mortal steps out of the shadows, hands folded neatly behind his back, and he is smiling. It is a thin, shallow smile, pleasant politeness stretched unconvincingly over a flat, cold apathy. Loki recognizes him now; he'd waited in the shadows of Thor's holding cell while this small-framed mortal interrogated Thor. He'd been the first one out to the desert to face the Destroyer when it landed on Earth, calling ineffectual threats and demands from his loudspeaker. He remembers Thor speaking a name: Son of Coul.

Loki is beset by conflicting emotions; the first startled bemusement, that the target he thought he would have to painstakingly hunt down comes so easily and tamely to his hand. And the second outrage, that a pitiful mortal like this one had sought to best a God not once but twice - first Thor, and now himself.

Coulson is still smiling. It's still completely insincere. "Phil Coulson," he says, flashing a bright metal badge that he apparently expects to have some significance. "Agent of SHIELD. We received a tipoff that you might come here today, in search of a certain young lady against whom you had laid threats in the past."

Loki blinks rapidly, scrambling to recall what in the Nine Realms this man might be talking about. At last he remembers: Jane Foster, and a hysterical taunt thrown at his brother in the heat of battle. "You must be mistaken," he gets out.

"No, I don't think I am," Coulson says lightly. His smile fades. "Loki Odinson, brother of Thor, God of Lies, pretender to the throne of Asgard. Way I heard it you'd been confined to your quarters in Asgard, either as a traitor or as a madman; but since you're _here -_ and conveniently without your magic, as well - perhaps you would be so kind as to answer for the counts of of property damage, and dozens of injury lawsuits that came from your unprovoked rampage the last time you were on Earth."

Loki's breath hisses from his lips. The _arrogance_ of this little - ! How does he even _know_ Loki's name, his face, his title - how can he possibly know what has transpired on Asgard? The Bifrost is broken, Loki is the first Aesir who can possibly have set foot on this world since it broke, and he _knows_ that the mortals have nothing like the technology that would allow them to communicate with Asgard -

He's bluffing, he must be, and Loki calls him on it. "Where did you possibly get these ridiculous notions?" he demands icily, drawing himself up to his full height.

"Oh," Coulson says with a menacing smirk. "A little bird told me."

Loki hears the flapping of wings, and whirls around to see an arching silhouette framed in the glare of the sunlight through the window behind him. A huge raven, its wingspan easily dwarfing the length of Loki's arms, mantles its wings to keep its balance on the windowsill, and cocks one beady black eye to glare at him.

Huginn. The All-Father's messenger.

It seems even Loki cannot outfly the flapping tongues of rumor.

"Not exactly the courier I'm used to," Coulson says blandly. "But when in Rome..."

* * *

Loki leans back in the hard metal chair facing Director Fury's desk, affecting an ease he does not truly feel. The mortal's one-eyed gaze disconcerts him, although at least he does not affect a golden eyepatch the way King Odin does. The look of stern, angry disapproval is unpleasantly familiar, however.

The whole situation is not inclined to put Loki at ease. It is true that he had desired this interview, and gone to great lengths to cooperate with Coulson's demands in the course of bringing him here. He had undergone a vexing number of humiliations before being brought to this base and admitted to this audience, including - among other things - being posed before the large screen of one of their machines to confirm that the All-Father's binding had truly suppressed his magic. It was no more than Loki himself had known, of course, but the reminder of the All-Father's treachery still stung him bitterly; the more so that these lowly peons should be a witness to it.

In his last encounter with SHIELD's director, Loki had met the man on the bridge of his flying castle, but that was not in evidence today; instead, they had brought him to a subterranean base a few hours' travel from his landing site, still in the desert. The architecture and design had the same cool impersonal feel as the castle, though - all white and grey metal with a spartan atmosphere.

"You cannot keep me here," Loki says last, breaking the silence by asserting his autonomy - testing the waters. "I am a Prince of Asgard, and not one of your subjects; I am not of this kingdom, or even this planet. You have no grounds to detain me."

Fury frowns at him. "How about attempted murder?" he says, his voice harsh and grating. "Pretty much our first and only contact with you was you sending a Terminator robot to kill your brother."

Loki grits his teeth at the reminder of that disastrous day. "That was an internal Asgardian political matter, and does not concern you in any way," he snaps.

Fury makes a noise in his throat that could be a suppressed bark of laughter, or could just be him clearing his throat. "Scuse me, but when you bring your 'internal' infighting to OUR planet and trash OUR towns, it DOES kind of concern us in a big way."

Loki sighs internally. It is clear that that momentary brush with Midgardian authorities is going to continue to poison all attempts at negotiation here. "It was never my intention to cause harm to your planet or any who live on it, and any damage caused was completely accidental. I apologize for it." Not that he was really particularly sorry, but he had to make some show of conciliation. "Perhaps it will help assure you of my goodwill if I give you valuable information about an imminent threat."

The mortal scoffs. "I don't generally take advice on home defense from a burglar."

"Really? But who else would know more on the topic?" Loki says with a charming smile.

Fury scowls at him. "It's not so much a matter of expertise as it is of trustworthiness."

Loki's smile widens, his lips peeling back to show his teeth as he settles back further in the chair. "Come, now, you consider yourself a connoisseur of information, yet you would willingly turn a deaf ear to new intelligence freely given?" he says, almost purring. "You disappoint me, Director Fury."

Fury visibly hesitates, and Loki almost wants to laugh. The man is bristling and hostile, proud in his well-earned paranoia and yet it is not so difficult as all that to read him, to find out what strings to pluck to get the desired reaction. "Say on," Fury says grudgingly.

So Loki takes a deep breath, and starts at the beginning.

He's had plenty of time in the past few months to rehearse his tale, pull together all the relevant details to form a smooth and coherent beginning. He starts at the beginning, his first arrival on Earth years ago, and goes on to explain the events leading up to the invasion with as much detail and precision as he can. That he is from the future, with as many corroborating dates and facts as he can mention, and that he has come back to deliver a warning of an impending catastrophe. The Tesseract, its nature and its abilities, the wrinkles and ripples it makes it the fabric of space that attracted unwanted attention from alien peoples. Erik Selvig's work on the project.

"This all is classified intelligence, Mr. Odinson," Fury interrupts, his one eye dark and troubled. "I'd be very interested in knowing your source for it."

Loki rolls his eyes. "Time traveller, remember?" he says. "This is all _old_ information for me. I fought with you during the last days." And that is stretching the truth a bit; he only ever met Fury but one time, on the Helicarrier before Tony - before Thanos emerged. But if he can protect Tony by not saying so, he will.

"How do you even know about the Tesseract to begin with?" Fury says. "Only select members of SHIELD know about that project - and before that, it was known only to HYDRA."

"And where do you think this HYDRA got it from? They certainly did not build such an artifact with their own pitiful human craft," Loki says with a snort. "The Cube is an artifact of _my_ people, Director - lost here on Midgard hundreds of years ago. And you humans treat it like a battery, siphon of dribs and drabs and think yourselves very clever for it. It is a fifth-dimensional channel which can bend and fold the very fabric of space-time itself, and it _will_ lead your enemy right to your door."

His voice becomes cooler, more clipped, as he approaches the day of the invasion itself. He learned his lesson well from Odin; he will not allow any unseemly outbursts of hysterical emotion to disrupt his story or cast doubt upon his reliability as a witness. Fury keeps a remarkable poker face, but Loki can see the increasing tension in his shoulders and hands as Loki blandly describes the death of the mortal heroes, one by one, and the emergence of the cataclysmic threat onto Midgard.

Of his own actions in the wake of the destruction, Loki abridges as much as possible. He does not go into details about his own disordered state when he first crawled trembling out of the void; he simply describes his return to Asgard with the vague implication that it had been his own magecraft that enabled him to slip through time. His fallout with Thor and Odin, too, he keeps vague; he says only that "their preparations for the coming war were insufficient," and that drove him to seek further aid on Midgard.

When he reaches the end of his tale, silence falls in the cold metal office. Fury's expression is still and controlled, but his hands reflect his tension; tightening around the edge of the desk, fingers drumming restlessly.

"I don't see your angle in this, Odinson," Fury says at last. "What do you get out of telling us this?"

Loki is taken aback by the question. With a threat of this magnitude, is it not self-explanatory? Why would there need to be a selfish motivation? "Well, among other things, I _do_ have to continue living in this world," he says acidly. "I'd rather it remain intact so that I can do so."

Fury frowns at him. "What is it exactly that you expect us to do?"

"You must gather your Avengers," Loki says without hesitation. "And be ready. You will need a force of mighty heroes to turn back the invasion, and your ordinary mortal troops will only be grist for the mill."

Fury shakes his head. "The Council won't activate the Avengers Initiative without an immediate threat," he says.

"The threat _is_ imminent!" Loki snarls; the mortal's stubbornness is unbelievable. "They will steal the Tesseract first - soon, if it hasn't happened already. They will need it to open the doorway from their galaxy to here -"

"So what do you propose?" The Director's expression is blank and emotionless, but Loki can easily hear the scorn in it. "You think we should give it to _you,_ then?"

"It belongs rightfully to the King of Asgard, and I am of his house," Loki snaps. "I have more of a right to it than you ever will - but if you will not surrender it to its proper keepers, you _must_ at least take steps to keep it safe. Move it to a secure location - one which no one but yourself knows - "

"Rest assured that security on the Tesseract is our top priority, Mr. Odinson," Fury tells him coolly. "It's being guarded by our top-clearance, most trusted operatives -"

"Your enemy is a shape-shifter!" Loki interrupts him, voice taut with aggravation. "Any of those operatives could _be_ the thief! There is _no one_ you can trust but yourself!"

"I do not intend to start a witch-hunt in my own organization on the word of some trumped-up conman from flying Viking country!" Fury snaps back, raising his voice to a roar at last as he slams one fist on the table.

Loki sits back without answering, wary of Fury's unchecked aggression. He cannot overpower the man, not in his own base of operations, at the heart of his own empire. He must have Fury's cooperation, so instead of meeting the man's outburst with his own, he backs down, waiting for Fury's temper to cool.

Fury takes a long breath, then folds his hands loosely on the table before him. When he speaks again, his voice is calm. "I'm sure you can understand why I'd be a bit hesitant about accepting intel from you," he says. "See, we've heard interesting things about you from Asgard via the feathered express. Your brother seems to think you're up to some wild scam -"

Loki grits his teeth, but refrains from blurting out his exact opinions on Thor and his clever ideas of conspiracy. Bad enough that Thor should plague him back in Asgard, without his voice chasing Loki halfway across the universe to sabotage all his efforts on Midgard as well.

"Your father, on the other hand, insists that you're delusional," Fury goes on, and Loki can't stop the flinch that comes with that. "So, you're either a liar or you're crazy. Either way doesn't exactly fill us with confidence."

"Or else they're both wrong and I'm telling the truth," Loki says, deathly soft. "Can you afford to take the chance that I am right, Director? Can your _world_ take that chance?"

The question hovers between them for a long moment, a challenge to Fury's guardianship of Earth that he cannot ignore. At length, the dark-skinned mortal blows out his breath and lowers his head, rubbing at the bridge of his nose and his eyes with one hand. "Look," he says. "The way I see it, we've basically got your word against theirs. Now it's true that we don't really know enough about these Asgardians that we trust them implicitly. On the other hand, your last few actions on Earth haven't exactly left you brimming over with credibility and goodwill. I'll need more than that before I act on any intel you give us."

"What guarantees could I offer that you would accept?" Loki asks.

Fury shrugs a little. "It would help if you could find anyone at all on Earth to vouch for you," he says.

Loki considers. He's been to Midgard many times in the past, made allies (and puppets) alike - but time turns over too quickly on this realm, and most of those who would have come at Loki's bidding are long dead. Blast. There is only one - "Call for Tony Stark, then," he says abruptly. "He will vouch for me. You do trust _him,_ do you not? If you were planning to make him one of your 'Avengers.' "

Fury's eyebrows go up. "And who is Tony Stark to you, God of Mischief?" he asks skeptically.

"His lover," Loki shoots back, adding a sweet but nasty smile. "Is that enough of a connection for you, or do I need to describe the way his toes curl during orgasm first?"

Loki didn't think it was possible for Fury's eyebrows to rise any further, but they did; if he'd had a hairline, they would have been lost in it. But he acquiesces, beginning to extend a modicum of trust to Loki at last - either that, or Loki has made him too curious to ignore.

"All right, then," Fury says. "We'll give this a try."

* * *

More SHIELD guards escort him from Fury's office to a holding cell. It is the same bare white-and-grey metal scheme as the rest of the base, with a white-sheeted cot and a small walled-off privy area. The cell is square, five paces on a side, with a thick sheet of retractable glass separating the bulk of the cell from the door so that jailors may come and speak to the prisoner without risking an escape. There are no chains or bars, nor flickering torches, but a prison is a prison nonetheless.

Now alone, Loki prowls the edges of his cell with restless energy. He is alone, but he can sense eyes watching him from somewhere beyond the room. Pitiful mortal technology - yet here he is, and escape hovers tantalizingly beyond his fingers.

The truth is that he's distressingly bereft of tricks and plans, just now. With his magic bound and the Casket of Ancient Winters taken from him, there are not very many options left for escaping this place. He will have to rely on his words alone to talk his way round these mortals - who have already proven themselves most unhelpfully suspicious, and thus far resistant to all his attempts to persuade and charm.

Voices from further along the corridor make him prick up his ears - Fury, returning from his errand, brings with him the promise of action. But more than that it's the other voice - a familiar, longed-for, beloved voice - that brings every fiber of his being awake, alight with joy and hope for the first time in years.

Tony's voice echoes along the hallway towards him, sounding cranky. "You know, I don't appreciate being dragged out here at fuck-all in the morning," he's saying. "I do consulting work for you every now and then, but I didn't sign up for a punch-clock. I'm not really the timecard sort."

"It's two in the afternoon," Fury's voice returns wearily.

"Yeah, well, some of us were up late last night saving the world," Tony says, closer and louder now, his voice full of the cocky brashness that Loki knows so well. The cell door hisses open and the pair of men step through it, separated from Loki only by the thick wall of glass down the middle of the cell.

Tony looks well - looks _wonderful,_ despite the sour expression pulling his mouth and eyes down around the edges. His brown eyes are lively and snapping, his frame healthy and fit, and he moves with the same unconscious authority he always does - owning the room just by standing in it, eclipsing even the formidable presence of Nick Fury. Even without his suit, Tony has always exuded an aura of power that never fails to draw Loki to him.

He finds himself on his feet, both hands pressed up against the transparent barrier between them as though he can will himself through it without the aid of magic. "Tony," he cries out, his eyes devouring his lover, drinking in every inch of him - whole and handsome and _well,_ no more the broken bloodied doll of his nightmares. "You are alive! Thank the Nine!"

Tony jerks back, despite the heavy glass and the gulf of space that leans between them, and a fierce frown spreads over his features. "Whoa, whoa, hold the phone," he says. Turning to Fury, he jerks a thumb back over his shoulder at Loki. "Who's this joker?"

And Loki... freezes, all joy and light within him stilled in a moment as sudden and chilling as when he'd picked up the Casket for the very first time and watched his very own skin betray him. "It... it's me, Loki," he says hesitantly, broken - all the fragments of his composure and surety suddenly scattered around him. "Don't you remember me?"

The realization bursts in on him with ugly, sickening suddenness - the reality he has stubbornly refused to face for all these long months since he'd fallen to the Void for the second time. Time rewound itself, the worlds remade, all the dead quickened once more - all with no memories of the cataclysm that had befallen them, save Loki.

But even as he'd thought - hoped (prayed) that Tony would be alive again, unhurt again, restored to that single moment of time at the breaking of the Bifrost - even as he'd thanked all the kind graces in the universe for granting him another chance, wiping the slate clean to start again -

It had never once occurred to him to think, not once, that Tony would not know him.

"Never seen you before in my life," Tony says with a shrug.

Loki can only stare at him, pressing on the glass pane that separates him from his one-time lover. He feels hollow, eviscerated, as though someone (someone, he knows exactly who) has reached up under his ribcage and jerked his heart and lungs out to leave a bleeding cavity behind. Even when Tony died before his eyes he hadn't felt like this - not like this. His heart had broken but at least it had still been _there,_ shattered into pieces inside him but he hadn't felt the howling void sweeping through his insides and leave him scoured bare.

"He claims to be your boyfriend," Nick Fury supplies, moving in on Tony's side. He takes up a station against the wall by the door, watching both of their faces intently. "From the future."

"Hang on, back up a moment here," Tony says stridently. "So some hobo shows up and claims to be my _future_ boyfriend, and you entertained that piece of bullshittery for more that fifteen consecutive seconds? How ridiculous is that, let me count the ways - "

He begins to tick them off on his fingers. "Number one, I'm _in_ a committed relationship with a better woman than a man like me deserves, and I don't intend to give that up, thank you _very much_. Number two, I may have made a lot of poor choices in my old days of wild oats, but I have _some_ standards, thank you very much. I have never, and _will_ never sleep with a psycho villain, no matter how hot. Leveling small New Mexico towns in a jealous murder-spree? Definitely what I would consider a dealbreaker."

The breath hisses out of Loki, a pure exhale of rage and heartbreak. _You said it was all right. You said I was still a person worth loving. You said that we were the same, you and I, you said that you understood the blood on my hands because you had done the same and more, you said that I could be forgiven, you said you said you said -_

_you said you loved me_

Lies, lies, it was all lies. He'd always known Tony had a cruel streak in him, admired him for it even, but he'd never been on this side of his cruel barbed tongue before - never seen that deep selfishness turned against him this way. Tony Stark the hero, Tony Stark the killer, self-righteous and pure - who could extend compassion and empathy, who could offer understanding and forgiveness, but only to the people that _he cared about._ Who could forgive rage and vengeance and murder, but only when it selfishly suited him to do so.

"Number three -" He twists around to stare incredulously at Nick Fury, who shrugs. "Time travel? Seriously, Nick? You know damn well that's impossible."

Nick Fury shrugged again. "I've learned better than to use words like 'impossible' around you lot."

Tony shakes his head in disgust. "This was a total waste of my morning," he says.

"Afternoon," Nick reminds him, and Tony ignores him. He wheels towards the entrance, one hand waving carelessly over his shoulder. "Fuck this noise, I'm out of here."

He starts for the door, and Loki finds his voice at last. "The night we met, it was at a charity auction event in New York City, sponsored by the Rockefeller foundation," he says, his voice low and velvet, all his grief and fury compressed into a kind of seductive purr. "You wore a Louis Vitton suit with lightning bolts on the tie. Although the tie didn't survive the night."

Tony pauses, hanging mid-step with his hand reaching for the door but not quite touching. Loki pushes himself to his feet again, still leaning heavily on the glass wall. "You offered me a glass of Old Forester, from the stash you keep hidden in the panel behind the minifridge. I took ice in mine, but you always prefer your whiskey neat. There's a hole in the wood paneling you can only see from behind the bar, from the time you tripped into it while you wore the suit up there while drunk."

Slowly Tony pulled his hand back, turning over his shoulder to look Loki in the eye. The cocky sureness was draining out of him, to be replaced by a kind of uncertain horror. At another time Loki might have balked at revealing such personal, potentially blackmailable information in front of Nick Fury, with whom Tony had always been tense at best - but right now, he really did not give a damn.

"We fucked for the first time on the couch in front of the bay windows," he said softly, winding Tony in with his words. "Then again on your bed, afterwards. California king, two mattresses with no box spring underneath. Thirteen pillows - well, at the time, though it was down to eleven when we were done. You can't fall asleep on your back, you have to roll on your side first; and you don't snore, but you _do_ mumble in your sleep."

Silence hovers in the cell between them. Tony meets his eyes, and what shows most clearly in those brown eyes is fear. Fear of the unknown, fear of being _uncontrolled,_ that there could be a part of his life that a stranger has had such intimate access to and Tony never knew. Loki meets his gaze challengingly, and isn't sorry for it.

"Okay," Tony says shakily. "Okay, that level of stalker creepiness? Definitely not a turn-on."

Nick Fury breaks the tension, clearing his throat. "He seems to know an awful lot about you," he says, "for a total stranger."

Tony shakes himself free of the paralysis. "Yeah well," he says shakily, trying for flippant. "In case you hadn't noticed, Nick, I'm not exactly the world's most private person. It's not actually all that difficult to get a spy far enough into my confidences to find out all that and more, as you would know, since _you've done it. "_

He switches his attention to glare at Fury, who doesn't even bother to look sorry for it. "The way I figure," Tony continues, regaining more of his brash demeanor, "we've got two possibilities.

"Actual time travel, which is a mathematically proven impossibility by the way, of one survivor coming back to warn us from an extremely unlikely planet-destroying event -" He holds up one hand, wiggling it as though to demonstrate the shakiness of the argument. "Orrrrr that the explicitly-identified _God of Lies_ is running a confidence scam, using some scarily good cold-reading techniques and some interior decorating information that could be gleaned on a pass through a telescope." He drops his hands. "Come on. Occam's razor. Which do _you_ think is more likely?"

Loki just watches him, words clogging up behind his tongue like magma building up behind a plugged volcano. He could keep going, he could say more, but Tony doesn't want to listen - _refuses_ to listen, refuses to hear - so it would all be in vain. The man he loved so dearly is gone. No. Worse. He never existed. And there's not enough left in Loki's scraped-out heart cavity to turn himself inside out to bear what's left to this cold and mocking stranger.

"We're done here," Tony says. He smiles, a false smile that stretches his lips tightly across his teeth but does nothing to melt the coldness in his eyes, and blows Loki a mocking kiss across the glass. "Bye, tall dark and crazy. Don't call me, okay?"

He turns, and strides out of the cell.

* * *

At some point Loki has sunk - fallen - to his knees, crumpled on the floor of the cell with only the sheet of glass supporting his weight. Gradually he realizes that Nick Fury has returned, and is staring down on him from the other side of the sheet of glass.

Loki's head is too heavy to hold up, his eyes too weighted down to look up to meet his censuring stare. He doesn't even feel the scald of humiliation, of staking all his pride and hope on one man who threw it violently back in his face. He doesn't feel anything at all through the numbness.

Fury doesn't speak, though, and at length Loki moves his mouth, wets his cracking lips with his tongue, and whispers, "You must set a watch on the southern continent there - a warning. You must make plans, at least, to defend against the invasion. It is your duty as the protector of your people. Surely you can see it is only in your best interests - surely you can see there is no way that doing so could harm you."

"At least say you'll keep watch," Loki says - begs, because there is nothing else he can do. He has nothing left, no way to threaten, bribe, or bargain for Fury's cooperation. "At least say you'll be ready."

"I always make a point to be ready," Fury says, "for everything."

He tilts his head to one side, weighing the risks. "I'll think about it." He turns and walks out, and the door hisses shut behind the flowing tails of his coat.

Loki sinks to the floor again, and tries to hold onto the cold comfort that Fury, unlike Odin, at least has the decency not to pretend consideration he does not truly feel. He has delivered his warning - he got his message out.

Surely that is all anyone could ask of him.

* * *

Time passes.

There are no clocks in his cell, no calendar, no way to mark the passage of time at all save for the periodic dimming of the lights from day to night. He is left only with his internal clock to mark the days, counting steadily down to the day his life fell (will fall?) apart.

When he finally reaches what should be the day, his anxiety kicks into high gear. As hours creep by with nothing, hope and fear wind around each other to ratchet the tension ever higher. Is today even the right day, or is his counting wrong? Has the invasion started? Was it defeated? Is Midgard saved? Did Fury listen to his warning after all, did he prepare sufficiently to drive back the army? Did he muster the Avengers? Did Tony go to fight, is he dead, is he alive? (Does Loki care any more if he lives?) Will they believe him, _now_ do they believe him, his father his brother Nick Fury (Tony?)

Was he wrong all along, is there no danger after all? Was his father right, is he truly mad?

When the first tremors start, it is almost a relief. No longer, at least, is he tormented by hope.

"I told you!" he shouts to the blankness of his cell's walls; he knows they watch him by more of their electrical magic, even if he cannot see the glass eyes. Assuming, of course, that anyone is left alive to watch. He strikes the wall near the door with his fist, more as an outlet for his frustration than out of any real hope of breaking through the reinforced metal, and increases his volume until his own voice rings painfully in his ears. "I gave you the _very day and time!_ How incompetent can you mortals possibly _be_ that that was not _enough_ for you?!"

But the bitter triumph of vindication does not sustain Loki for long. He hunkers down near the floor of his cell, waiting. The tremors do not stop, but slowly increase in power, the earth's agony making itself known even through the thick walls. Eventually, they will grow to such force and power as to rip this place apart like a tin can; but Loki fears that he will be crushed to death in its embrace long before that can happen.

Time passes. The wracking of the earth subsides for a time, then grows again. No voices penetrate from outside his prison but he can hear the high-pitched wailing of sirens from somewhere outside; first one, then few, then many. All at once a number of them cut off into silence, leaving only one to drone on in solitude. It itches at his ears, irritating as a baby's cry; and he is trapped here, unable to fight, unable to fly, pinned like a bug in a jar waiting for the hand that will crush him.

After a length of time - he does not know how long - voices return to his world. Two voices, neither of them familiar to him - a man and a woman, talking in urgent raised tones. (Well, of course, he thinks; the world is ending. What better time?) Then rapid, harsh footsteps coming down the corridor towards him. He raises his head, then uncoils to his feet (rocking back and forth slightly with the unsteady motion of the ground) and waits for them.

The outer door hisses open, and a tall, bony woman steps into the little antechamber behind the glass sheet. She reminds him somewhat of Sif, in the height, the dark hair, the burning eyes. She especially reminds him of Sif after a battle, for the whole right side of her face is torn and abraded, the wounds cleaned and partially covered by taped gauze, but still promising pain. Her right arm is bound to her side in a sling, but there is no hesitation in her stride. Any doubt left within her has been cauterized, and this is the scar that remains.

She is trailed shortly by a protesting half-armored guard, without half the authority she herself carries. "Agent Hill, you can't do this!" the man exclaims. "This prisoner is under _highest clearance_ security - no one except the Director himself or a member of the Council can authorize his release -"

"This isn't the time for procedures and regulations, Andre," the woman - Hill - says tightly. "You've seen what's out there. It's all or nothing now."

"Director Fury hasn't approved - "

Hope returns again, surging painfully to the surface. He steps forwad, his eyes locking with the woman - Agent Hill - as he reaches one hand out to balance against the glass. "But Directory Fury is dead," he says.

The two of them stop their arguing and turn to stare at him; the man in outraged disbelief, the woman in suspicious hope.

"Isn't he," Loki breathes, pressing his other hand against the glass.

"We've lost contact with the Director," Hill says, pressing her lips tight together. "But nothing has been confirmed."

"Your flying castle was too close to the locus of Nidhhogg's emergence," Loki guesses. It's not too hard of a guess. "They would never even have had a chance to retreat."

"How do you know about that?!" the man demands fearfully. "There's no way you could know that!"

"You knew about everything," Hill says, looking right at him and ignoring her companion. "You were the one who saw it coming. That... thing. Did you come here to fight it?"

He very nearly laughs in her face. There is no _fighting_ Nidhhogg; it is a creature that can devour very _planets,_ who can unmake matter itself in its jaws. You might as well try to fight the sun, or old age. Once it has come upon you, it is far too late for fighting.

That is the truth of it, but what good is truth to Loki Lie-smith? Honesty has done nothing but bring him here, low and helpless while doom encroaches upon him. He thinks of Odin; of Fury; of Tony. And why should Loki alone of the Nine Realms be bound to honesty, when all about him wrap themselves in secrets, hypocrisy and lies?

And so he looks in her eyes, desperate with hope, and lies. "On every world," Loki says softly, infusing earnestness into every breath. Feeding her the fiction she so wants to hear. "With every fiber of my being, I fight it."

Her expression firms, and she nods sharply before stepping forward. She steps forward. "I want your word that if I release you, you'll help us defeat that creature."

"Yes! Yes, let me fight with you," Loki says, feigning eager enthusiasm. "I know its weaknesses." A lie. A force of nature like the Unmaker has no weaknesses. "There is still time." A lie. It is far too late. "Free me, and I will save this world. I swear it on my very name." And that one is not even really a lie.

Ignoring the protests of her companion, Hill reaches out to a panel out of sight behind the door and taps in some arcane sequence. There is a shrill buzz - apparently whatever she has done, the machines do not like it - and the lights in the cell and corridor turn lurid red. A reverberating _clunk_ sounds through the cell, and the glass wall slides grudgingly away. Loki steps past it into the hallway, free for the first time in more than a year.

Half a platoon of armed guards are waiting in the hall beyond; no matter what desperation drove Hill to approach Loki to make this deal, she clearly has not lost her caution. He would approve of her prudence, if only it weren't such a damned nuisance now. Hill starts off down the corridor and Loki obediently falls into step beside her, with the armed guards following on close behind.

Outside of the protected little walls of his cell, the chaos is much more evident. The noise of sirens comes through much more clearly, as does the faint acrid tinge of smoke drifting through the air. Hill rattles off question and orders, and Loki absently supplies the answers that are expected from him as they stride quickly through hallways crumpled from the force of the near-constant tremors. Avoiding the elevators - unlikely they even still work, now - they emerge from a stairwell onto the roof of their building, blinking in the light of day.

"The creature was last seen approaching San Francisco," Hill says, snapping orders that send black-clad figures scurrying left and right. "Everything we've got that will still get airborne, take it up and rendezvous over San Mateo to engage from above. Odinson, you'll be with me. We'll get as close as we can to the creature's head, and you'll do your thing from there."

Loki turns to her with a smile, then lashes out with a backhand that sends her skidding across the roof.

Cries of anger and consternation spring up all around them, and a few guards which are quicker on the uptake than their fellows are already turning their guns on him. Loki dives to the side as the first stuttering bullets clip the rooftop where he was; he comes up behind another guard, slower than his fellows, and seizes him by the neck to use as a temporary shield from the gunfire as his eyes flicker rapidly over the battlefield, counting his foes.

Too many, he concludes, and too scattered. His makeshift shield will not protect him once they fan out to circle around him. He _could_ take them all out, eventually, but it would take far too much time, and he has none of that to spare.

Loki backs away towards the wall from which they came, inviting the other guards to cluster together as they advance on him. Once enough of them have gathered together, Loki reaches down within himself and calls on the _cold._

He has never done this before without the aid of the Casket of Ancient Winters; but all he must do is remember the icy winds of the Chitauri slaughtering grounds, where even hot blood froze upon the snow. He remembers the howling cold of the Void, the nothingness between worlds where stars never shine... and his skin thickens and chills in response, turning from familiar pale to a deep, icy blue.

He turns and sends a wave of thick blue ice from his hand, washing over the gathered soldiers and battering them to the floor, locking them in place with a tomb of ice once they're down. It sends a sick dread through his stomach even as he does it; these humans aren't as strong as the Aesir, and although Heimdall survived this (barely) Loki doesn't know if these mortals can.

But he has no choice. No time. If he fails in what he's about to attempt, they will all die anyway and it won't matter. And if he succeeds... then it still won't matter.

As soon as the rooftop is clear, he casually tosses his hostage-shield aside, runs for the nearest edge of the rooftop, and leaps into the air. The fall to the street below is long enough for him to reach into the hidden space between worlds where he kept Freya's cloak of feathers, and draw it on.

As a bird he claws his way through the sky, his falcon's eyes sweeping over the chaos below. The city streets are devastated, buildings collapsed and crumpled, the twisted wrecks of cars blocking the streets to prevent any escape. Even the air is no safe haven, however; thick plumes of smoke below up from fires on the ground below, the roar of flames stirring hot currents of air that threatens to roast anything in their path. Worse yet are the rumbling belches of smoke and flame that come not from any surface fire, but from cracks deep into the tormented earth, where unspeakable pressure upon the planet's entrails send surges of lava bursting forth from the surface, sending choking ash and pyroclastic missiles hundreds of feet through the air.

Loki fights his way through the sea of fire and smoke, head swimming with the fumes, seeking a way out. It is too late, he realizes, to climb the dark paths to Asgard; he barely made that flight the first time, and he had started in much better time. He would never now reach the broken Bifrost and all the dubious sanctuary that it offers.

But he does not need to. The Void laps at the edges of all lands, where the borders meet and the seams of reality are unevenly matched. He seeks for the threads, the weave of the lay-lines of the land, and tries to remember from years past his studies of the maps of Midgard.

At last he finds one such ragged edge - a place the mortals call Bermuda, where three lay-lines converge and snarl, leaving a gap in the fabric of reality through which the unwary (or the cunning) can slip. He claws his way across the sky, away from the fire-torn land behind him and across the heaving, boiling, uneasy sea.

It is getting hotter and hotter, the water churning below him like a sauce-pot, and the steam and fumes it throws up nearly chokes him, waterlogging his wings until he can barely keep aloft. Beneath its watery mantle, the crust of the earth still cracks and shudders, sending shocks through the ocean that manifest as towering, sweeping waves that threaten to knock him from the sky. Far to his left, the horizon itself heaves and moves as one of the great coils of Nidhhogg slides across the edge of his vision.

At last he finds it, the gap in the world ahead of him, torn wider now by the intrusion of the uncanny into this world. The cold nothingness beckons to him, almost pleasant now compared to the crucible of fire and steam that envelops Midgard, and Loki plunges into it without a second's hesitation.

Loki falls; and as he does so, he feels Freya's cloak unraveling into nothingness around him; feels Odin's touch fall from him, leaving nothing behind as evidence that they were ever there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea for Odin slapping the magic-binding rune on Loki while he wasn't watching -- as well as all the best ideas in this fic, and the idea for the fic in the first place -- should be credited to the lovely [Bottan.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Bottan) Also, while it wasn't her suggestion, the image of Loki disguising himself as a maid was inspired by [this piece of art by her;](http://bottan.tumblr.com/post/32751744165/my-favorite-thing-in-the-edda-so-far-loki-and#notes) notice that unlike Thor, Loki doesn't even need a veil to pass as a woman.


	4. The Last Stand [teamwork]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki embarks upon a new strategy, with much metacommentary upon the peculiar phenomenon that is superheroics.

Loki falls.

As he struggles through the currents of the stygian emptiness of the Void for the third time, he contemplates the metaphysical properties of the situation he's found himself in.

The Void is a place outside of space and time, and any attempts to impose such constraints upon it would be like trying to drain the sea with a drinking horn. The endless entropy of that  _nothingness_  is far too great for any sorcerer, man or God, to tame.

Yet even the Void is not completely immune to manipulation. It seems that when the Bifrost was destroyed and Loki fell - in that moment when the powers of Mjolnir, the Casket and the Bifrost all collided to tear open a hole in space and even time itself - that cataclysmic event was enough to make an impression. An echo, of sorts. Galvanized by the immense amounts of magical energy surrounding him, Loki's passage marked a frozen instant of time in the otherwise timeless void. And whatever else happens within the bounds of normal space, outside in the Void Loki can always return to that fixed point in time.

Through repeated experiments, Loki learns the limits of his new abilities. The Void borders everything; he can exit the Void onto any world or Realm that he can picture in his mind, whether part of the Tree or no. He can enter the world at any point in time after the impression was first made (although if he tries too late, there will be no world to exit to, so in practice the timeframe is rather limited.) Conversely, when he leaves a world into the Void, he ceases to exist there at any point in the timeline after the fall; no matter how many times he enters at the same point in time and space, he never meets himself. Any changes he makes in the world will revert the moment he leaves it, as though he had never existed there at all.

Objects that he displaced, too, return to their original position. The items he stole from Freyja's closet - including the cloak of feathers on his back - vanish without a trace, even from his pocket dimension. But the Casket of Ancient Winters, which he last left at the All-Father's hands, is back; everything has reverted to exactly as it was at the moment of his fall. The only changes that remain are the scars on his skin. Or under it.

Most importantly, there does not seem to be any limit on the number of times he can move back into the Void and re-enter the world in a new timeline. Each time it is as fresh as the first, the universe re-set to a single instant in time and space with no record of the previous timelines save in his memories. This realization brings him much-needed hope: he can still save the world. The possibilities stretch out to infinity before him, like the thousand thousand combinations in a single game of chess. However unlikely, however hard, it is impossible for him to fail when he need only step into the Void to reset the board and start again.

He has a thousand moves, and his enemy has only one. But that one move is the endgame.

* * *

Loki knows he cannot do it alone.

He will gather together Midgard's finest heroes. If Fury will not activate his "Avengers initiative," then Loki will  _take_  that initiative into his own hands.

He travels to Earth and begins making his first public appearances as a hero. It's a simple enough task; he needs only ask himself,  _what would Thor do?_  and then embark on whatever foolishness pops into his mind. It is not so difficult. The mortals were ready to embrace Thor as a hero after knowing him for only three days; they are inclined to think well of Asgardians, and Loki trades on that goodwill with shameless abandon.

Superheroes, he knows from his time cohabitating with Tony Stark, are defined by battle with super _villains;_ he must find and defeat a few of those in order to build credibility. At first he considers choreographing a few villainous schemes for himself to dramatically thwart, but the memory of what happened that  _last_  time he tried such an arrangement, in Asgard, holds him back. He risks too much, if his deception is ever discovered.

Besides, Midgard is flush with crimes and disasters of their own already, and most of them so foolish or incompetent that foiling them proves little challenge to his ability. He battles against a clumsy metal-shelled thug that goes by Titanium Man, a poor caricature of the original. He relives his dragon-slaying days with Thor when a ten-story tall reptile named Fin Fang Foom makes its appearance on Earth. He even condescends to engage with a pathetic would-be sorcerer calling himself Doll Man, overloading the clumsy and pitiful sorcery in the man's totem effigy and causing it to explode in his enemy's face.

Still he is mindful of Midgardian heroes' distaste for killing their enemies, not even in in the heat battle. This strikes Loki as even more ridiculous than Asgard's insistence on honorable combat; time and time again he sees other villains break from the impotent prisons and bonds that hold them, only to wreak havoc upon the public again. It really would be much simpler just to kill them; and if Loki were truly here to keep the peace, rather than to make a name for himself, the restriction would chafe at him.

For all his efforts, recognition is slow to come; still he cannot make the contacts he desires, is not accorded the authority he needs. A careful study of the human media shows that their people have a fondness for heroes who engage with the common man, using their mighty powers for mundane tasks that would be just as well served by leaving to the common police or municipal servants. This strikes Loki as almost as absurd as the distaste for killing; surely these mortals realize that it is a much better use of the heroes' resources to save all their time and energy for the greater threats that menace their world, and leave common tasks for the common folk?

Nevertheless, Loki makes the effort to appear in the more mundane sphere of crime-fighting. Chasing down robbers. Putting out fires. Saving kittens from trees. His acclaim begins to spread, with the mortal newspapers sporting headlines like "Who is the Minneapolis Magician?" speculating on his origin and intentions. He holds onto anonymity for a little longer, waiting for the most dramatically appropriate moment to make his introduction.

On one memorable day Loki defuses a terrorist hostage situation by the simple expedient of teleporting into their fiercely-defended fortress, turning all their primitive munitions to sherbet, and walking out the door with the hostages under his wing. The media is waiting on the streets with a hedgehog bristle of cameras and microphones all pointed in his direction; as soon as he appears they erupt into a babble of shouted questions.  _Who are you? Where did you come from? How did you get your powers? What are your goals?_

Loki stops and waits for the babble to die down; once it does, he blinds them with his most angelic smile and speaks. "I am Loki Liesmith," he says, for alliterative names seem to be all the fashion among superheroes; "and I come burdened with glorious purpose."

* * *

At last, the break that Loki was waiting for: he emerges victorious from a field of battle to find a black chariot waiting for him, emblazoned with the crest of SHIELD. As he approaches it the engine revs and the black doors pop open, but no dark-suited figures emerge to intimidate him: he is invited, it seems, but he is not summoned.

Good.

He accepts the invitation, climbing wordlessly into the dark vehicle, and less than an hour later he finds himself sitting in a comfortable chair before the desk of Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD. It is rather unnerving to sit here, trading narrow, calculating glances with the man who, the last time Loki saw him, was his jailor.

But not today. Today, they are equals; or if there is an imbalance of power, it favors Loki, as it should be. He is a hero in good standing; he has his strength and his magic, and as many tricks up his sleeve as he could need. And while he could certainly use the resources that Fury has to his command, Loki intends no longer to beg him for the salvation of Midgard.

"To what do I owe this honor?" Loki says, settling back in a pointedly comfortable posture.

"You seem to be new in the neighborhood," Fury replies. "I thought I'd ask you to stop by, introduce ourselves, bring a fruit basket and all that; and also I kind of hoped that you could clear something up for me."

"And what might that be?"

Fury leans forward, the false pleasantness fading almost entirely from his face and tone. "The press is all set to call you the latest superhero," he says, "and based on your activity since you appeared on Earth, I'm not disputing that. What I  _am_  a little concerned about is that this isn't your  _first_  appearance on Earth, is it, Mr… Liesmith?"

Loki keeps his expression neutral. "I'm not sure what you mean," he says.

Fury opens a bland yellow paper folder on his desk, nudging a few of the contents towards Loki. Loki scans it and sees reports, photographs: Thor, Mjolnir, a blurry shot of the Destroyer. The blackened, debris-choked streets of the mortal village after the Destroyer had been through there. "Admittedly, everything we've gotten out of Puente Antiguo is pretty fucked up," Fury says. "But we've got some pretty reliable sources that tell us that  _you_  were driving this thing. Care to explain?"

Loki sighs. If his last sojourn to Midgard taught him any lesson, it's that he'll have to deal with the fallout of this before he can do anything else here.

But not with truth. Truth is not, and never will be Loki's servant.

"I deeply regret the harm that came to that community," Loki says, projecting sincerity into his face and tone. "But please understand, you saw only a brief and distorted glimpse of the true situation.

"At the time of my brother's exile upon Earth, my father became deeply ill and fell into sleep - this was an expected event for him, although not perhaps expected on quite that day or time. While he was indisposed, I was called upon to serve as regent in his place, so that the day-to-day functioning of the kingdom would not be impeded."

Loki lets his face and eyes harden, let anger seep into his voice. "But while my father slept, a disaffected faction rose up and attempted a coup, even going so far as to strike at my father while he slept." Almost true. "It took some effort to subdue the coup, and I cannot say it was not bloody. Good men, brave men lost their lives in the melee." True if he counts the murder of the guards in the weapons vault, whose deaths he had never intended but had had not thought to prevent; and that thought lets him inject just the right note of anguish into his story.

Now comes the tricky part, the bridge. "In the wake of the disaster, one of the conspirators that we had captured alive implicated _my own brother_  in the planning of the coup. At the time, it sounded horribly plausible - Thor, cast out of the king's favor, all his prospects stripped from him... it seemed all too likely that he would do such a thing, resort to such measures to regain his place in the succession. In my righteous rage I sent the Destroyer to enact justice upon him - but I had not realized that Thor would hide himself among the innocent and defenseless. It was never my intention that you mortals would be involved.

Loki sits back. "Of course, once my brother returned to Asgard, we found out that he had not been involved in the coup attempt after all." Really, Loki could hardly imagine Thor lending himself to such a sneaky task; even if Thor were to foment discontent with the crown, he would do it quite openly, probably storming the palace in the middle of an audience day to deliver an impassioned speech before the crowd. "You cannot imagine my relief that I was mistaken, and he unharmed. But that still left the damage upon Midgard unaddressed, and so I have come to make amends."

Fury's eyebrows climb his forehead. "You decided to become a superhero on Earth to make up for trashing a town?" he says in disbelief. It is difficult for Loki to tell whether his incredulity is because the gesture is too much, or too little.

Better to err on the side of caution. "Of course, I also intend to pay a wergild to repair the damages." He had brought nothing with him from Asgard, this time, but in his first days on Earth he had paid a little visit to the inside of this kingdom's treasure vaults. The gold with which he plans to pay Fury is quite real, unlike the disguised lumps of base metal he left in their place in the vault, and he had spent an evening altering its form with magic to make it look more authentically Asgardian. He very much doubts these mortals will be able to tell the difference. "But what is cold bars of gold when compared to the deeds of a warm and caring heart? As prince of Asgard, it is my duty to  _protect_  this realm, not to treat it as a private venue for my own entertainment; all I ask, Director, is that you not hinder me as I go about my duties."

Fury stares at him, tapping his fingers on the edge of the table. He's not quite convinced, Loki can read that in the thoughts that pass over his face; he knows that Loki is still hiding something.

Loki stares back, calm and utterly resolute. Let him wonder; let him guess. Loki has nothing to lose. If by some unlikely chance Fury stumbles upon the truth - if by some chance he  _believes it -_  then that can only be to Loki's gain in their defense against the Chitauri invasion. And until he does not, then he will have nothing to go by save Loki's own explanation.

Fury's expression visibly shifts; it's hard to pinpoint just what changes, but when he sits back the tension in the room is far lessened. "Sounds good to me," he says. "So does the Prince of Asgard need anything from us lowly mortals?"

Loki takes care not to let himself visibly relax; he has passed the biggest hurdle. "Nothing too exotic," he says casually. "My magic will provide for most of my needs. But I will accept your extended hospitality, at least for a time, on behalf of myself and my company."

"Your company?" Fury sounds taken aback.

"Yes, of course I will need a team," Loki says, as though surprised that Fury had to ask. "Your mortal heroes are valiant enough, but it is incredibly inefficient for them to work entirely piecemeal and willy-nilly as they do. They lack coordination, and I would be most pleased to supply it. Are we not social creatures, Director, made to run in packs? If brute strength were all that we were meant to achieve, then why should we have developed communication?"

Fury keeps a cool poker face on, but Loki can see the hunger plain in his eyes. He remembers Fury's words from last time: _The council won't activate the Avengers without an immediate threat._ This idea of a team of super-heroes is his dream, his life's work, and he has come so close to it only to be stymied at the last moment by the little whims and timidities of politics.

"Of course," he adds off-handedly, "as you are the premiere source of information on threats to this world, we would of course be happy to assist you when called upon, should the situation warrant and require it."

"An admirable goal," Fury says neutrally. "I'd be happy to lend you one of my personnel, if you think it would add value to your team."

Of course he would. How better for Fury to monitor Loki's actions than by planting a mole by his very right hand? He can't refuse the offer without seeming suspicious, although of course he doesn't intend to. Loki frowns, pretends consideration. "I require a warrior skilled in long-distance tactics," he says. "I am accustomed to covering a great deal of ground during a battle."

"We have quite a few expert snipers on hand," Fury offers.

Loki makes a face. "I do not care much for your modern weapons," he says. "They are noisy, and inelegant." And that is all the hinting he can do towards the one armsman he really wants; if he becomes any more obvious, Fury will wonder where he got his information.

Fury smiles slowly, and pushes back to stand from the desk. "I believe I have just the man for you," he says. He hesitates. "He's one of my best agents, but I feel I should warn you beforehand: he has some history of... authority problems."

Loki frowns. "I will not work with a vassal who cannot follow commands in battle," he warns, an edge to his voice.

"No, no." Fury waves this away. "Nothing like that. He has no problem obeying orders. He's just a tad... impudent."

Impudent. Well. Loki has plenty of experience with _impudent_ mortals. He almost smiles, a rush of fondness blowing through him with the memory of Tony; then it is followed by a rush of rage, remembering Tony's jagged callousness in the cells of SHIELD, in a room not very much unlike this one.

Fury is watching him, and Loki clears his expression into something bland and friendly. He nods at Fury. "Well, Director, I believe I can work with that."

* * *

"Loki, this is Agent Clint Barton," Fury says. "Codename Hawkeye."

Loki asked for this man deliberately, knowing that he will be assigned to watch over Eric Selvig otherwise, and that he will die - bloodily and horribly - when the Chitauri spy infiltrates SHIELD to steal the Tesseract. By joining Loki's band, all unknowing, he will avoid that fate. This will be his first act of heroism, the first mortal life he saves, and the man does not even know from what fate he is being spared.

"Agent Barton," Fury adds, "this is Loki Liesmith. He's your new boss." With that brief introduction he turns and walks out, giving the two men a chance to size each other up - though Loki is sure he will continue to watch how this meeting goes from some remote location.

Loki studies the mortal with some interest, seeing in the flesh for the first time what he had only seen on flat still screens before. He's somewhat shorter than Loki expected, with plain features and muddy-dark blondish hair in a severe military cut. His eyes glitter, though, with a sharpness Loki has not often seen; they flick over Loki from head to toe, and then he suddenly smirks.

"Well, I'm a little disappointed," Hawkeye says. "I was hoping for tentacles, or maybe fangs."

Loki blinks. "Pardon?" he says.

"Never worked with an alien before," Hawkeye says with casual, deliberate insolence. "I wasn't expecting you to look quite so... human."

Loki gives him a long look, then scoffs, deciding to meet insolence with insolence. "I can assure you that my people wore this form while your ancestors were still swinging in the treetops."

Hawkeye grins. It's a surprisingly boyish look, despite the crows-feet that already tell of the advance of years and strain upon him. "So, I hear you're a prince."

"I suppose you're going to say you've never worked with royalty before, either," Loki says dismissively.

"Actually I have, quite a few times," Hawkeye says blandly. "But they're usually the marks, not the markers. A royal who actually  _does_  something is a bit of a new one on me. So, why did you ask for me?"

Loki keeps his tone impassive. "I told Fury, I needed a long-range combat specialist."

"Pardon me sir, that's bullshit," Hawkeye tells him politely. "I've seen vids of you fighting that dragon. You throw daggers like they're bar darts, when you're not throwing freaky bolts of technicolor light. You don't need long-range backup from anybody. So what did you really want me for?"

The little mortal is surprisingly acute, Loki acknowledges. This is a good sign; he may be useful for more than carrying out menial tasks. "Let's say I need a... native guide," Loki says experimentally. "A set of eyes on the ground. I am looking to collect a team of heroes. Where would I start?"

"Well," Hawkeye says thoughtfully, scratching at his head; then he grins. "Probably right in the basement of this building."

* * *

The smell of dried sweat (with just the faintest metal tang of old blood) hits Loki the moment he steps through the door, and he immediately identifies the large, bare space decorated only with shadows as a training ring, despite the unfamiliarity of architecture. Piles of mats and cushions lie alongside racks of weapons, although the swords and axes he's familiar with are replaced by the humans' ungainly grey and black weapons (although there is a promising array of suitably nasty knives down by the other end of the hall.) It is clear that this is where the mortals come to hone their skills, or just to work off accumulated stress and tension with their muscles.

The man in the corner, focused single-mindedly on beating the stuffing out of a large ugly hanging bag with his fists, looks to fall in the latter category. He is tall for a mortal (which means only slightly shorter than Loki himself,) and well-muscled, but the stains soaking his clothes and hair and the row of eviscerated hanging bags behind him shows that he has been at this long past the point of usefully developing his strength. There is a certain glassy expression on his face that suggests the greater part of him does not see the dimly lit gym around him at all.

When Hawkeye deliberately scuffs a step and fakes a cough, the man is warrior enough to snap out of his trance and whirl around to face them, arms tensing before he takes a step back and relaxes. "Oh, Agent Barton," he says, only slightly out of breath. "Sorry about that, I didn't see you come in. Did you want - did you wanna use the bags?"

"Hi, Cap'n," Hawkeye says, giving him a casual salute. "Nah, it's good. Sorry to interrupt you, but there's someone you want to meet, and this is pretty much the only place you're guaranteed to be at this time of day."

"Look, I'm sorry, but I'm not really in the mood for any more..." the blond man says, trailing off as he swipes a cloth-wrapped hand through his wet hair. "Wait, you said someone  _I_  want to meet? Not someone who wants to meet me?"

"Yep, that's what I said," Hawkeye says with a grin; he steps aside, giving the blond man a clear line-of-sight to Loki. The two men give each other a somewhat uncertain once-over. "Boss, this is Steve Rogers, better known as Captain America. Cap, this is Loki."

"Gosh, is this what all the kids are wearing these days, or, uh..." Rogers' brow wrinkles up with confusion. "Are you some kind of, uh, war re-enactor or something?"

Rogers is clearly unsure what to make of Loki's appearance, but Loki himself is not doing much better. The mortal's fair hair and blue eyes, as well as the painful earnestness in his face, give him a disconcerting resemblance to Loki's brother. It isn't overt, but the little things - the confidence in the way he moves, the play of his muscles as he tenses and fidgets, indicates a man much more at home to solving problems with his hands than with his words. Loki wonders if he can really fight beside this man, and then wonders what he's thinking; he'd fought beside Thor for centuries, why should he have lost that ability now simple due to an unpleasant association or two?

"I am Loki Liesmith," Loki says, stepping forward and offering a smooth, shallow bow. "I do not expect you to have heard of me. I come from Asgard as a representative of the King Odin the All-Father, and I am charged to fight in defense of this planet from all who would seek to menace it. I seek mortal heroes to fight by my side, and I wish you to join my band."

Steve Rogers blinks at him uncertainly, then sneaks a helpless glance over to Hawkeye. "Pull the other one," he says.

Hawkeye only grins - enjoying the other mans discomfiture, Loki thinks. "Serious as a tax audit, I swear," he says. "He's the real deal. Alien visitations are a thing nowadays. Don't feel bad, this is as new to us as it is to you."

"Wow," Rogers says, and then jumps a little as he seems to recall his manners. "Uh - pleased to meet you, I mean, it's an honor, Mr. Liesmith. You did mention, uh,  _King_ Odin?"

"My father," Loki says smoothly, enjoying no less than Hawkeye the opportunity to fluster the painfully earnest mortal. It's so very easy.

"Oh, wow," Rogers says again. "So you're a prince, right - sir? An actual alien prince. Um, I don't really know - I've never really met royalty before. Should I call you sir, or... Are you sure it's really me you're looking for?" he says a bit helplessly. "I'm just a Brooklyn kid who's way out of his depth. I don't really have much to... offer."

Loki raises an eyebrow. "I look to Midgard's mightiest heroes," he says. "You are the first, but you will not be the last; I seek any who will answer the call. Grave dangers threaten your world from dark reaches yet unknown to you, mortal. Any who would stand against them, I count them as my ally: I care not for petty details of class or station. Do but stand with me, and I will consider you as I would my brother."

"Well, that sounds pretty good to me," Hawkeye chirps brightly into the daunted silence that follows. He sends a narrow, calculating glance over at Steve Rogers. "That is, if Mr. America thinks he can bring himself to work with a Scandinavian alien prince."

Rogers straightens up unconsciously, his mouth firming into a stubborn line. "I don't know if you've read my files, but I worked with the Howling Commandoes through most of the war," he says, and the stammer is gone from his voice; he speaks with a quiet certainty, a dignity. "Good men, every one of them, from all over Europe. I'll work with anyone, if they've got the guts and the smarts to do the right thing. They might call me Captain America, but that doesn't mean I'm a jingoist meathead. Sir," he adds at the end.

Loki hums in amusement. "Well, that certainly is a recommendation," he says. Perhaps this mortal will have Thor's good qualities, but without the arrogance and self-righteousness that made his brother's presence intolerable. It would be a nice change of pace.

Then the levity fades from his face, and he lets his voice go deadly serious. "But be warned, Captain, this is no summer questing party," he warns. "You won't only be punching mere human soldiers in the face. If you join this team, you will be going up against the cruelest horrors that the universe can throw against you. The most deadly of threats, those that cannot be faced down by mortal armies. And victory will not bring peace, but only harder challenges. The longer we survive, the more we succeed, the harder our task will become: in our very greatness we will attract the attention of those very nightmares that crawl beneath your bed in the night.

"Our task may take us far from home - not only from your country, Captain, but away from the soil of this planet itself. And it may well be that we will die there, alone and unmourned, on foreign shores with no one left to witness our valor, in only the hope that by our death we can purchase the lives of our loved ones for another day."

Rogers isn't looking at him as he finishes his speech, heading over to a corner to strip the linen coverings off of his fists. For a moment Loki fears he's come on too strong, laid it on too thick.

But then Rogers turns around and when he does, there is not the slightest hint of doubt or hesitation in his face. "Where do I sign up?" he says.

* * *

"What do we seek in this godforsaken borough, again?"

Hawkeye is accompanying Loki on a trek through New York city; currently, they are passing through one of the older, more broken-down sections rather than the labyrinth of steel and glass towers. Although it seems bizarre to Loki to call any of these buildings  _old_  when they can hardly be up for more than a few centuries without their mortar and stonework crumbling. Shoddy work, but what can you expect of mortals?

"A local cape, mostly patrols around the downtown areas in New York City," Hawkeye replies. "Calls himself Spider-Man."

Loki will never understand why the heroes of Midgard feel it necessary to append their gender in their titles, as though the rest of the world will be confused otherwise. Hawkeye hands him a tablet playing a short loop of video: a distant figure in a splashy red outfit, locked in battle with a huge grey-skinned man with horns reminiscent of a bilgesnipe. The two of them are onscreen for less than a minute before the melee takes them out of the edge of the camera, but the clip loops over and over so that Loki has time to study their quarry in detail.

The spider-suited figure's strength is substantial for a mortal, if only average for one of the Aesir - he catches one of the metal vehicles flung his way with little apparent strain. But what truly impresses Loki is the spider-man's speed and agility. He leaps and twists through the air, evading every single one of his enemy's blows, seeming to anticipate a missile or a fist before it even comes his way. He of all people knows that fast and flexible beats strong but ungainly in battle nine times out of ten, and he has a healthy respect both for the ingrained agility and the skill required to use it effectively. No question about it, this would be a warrior Loki would wish to have at his side.

Loki looks up at Hawkeye. "We shall have him," he declares.

Hawkeye smirks. "Thought you'd say that," he says. "Only trouble is, he hides his identity. SHIELD's never been able to track him back to his base of operations, not that we've really tried all that hard, since he's definitely a friendly no matter what the local rag says about him. But it means we don't exactly have an address on file to go knocking at his door."

Loki frowns. "Why should he shroud himself in secrecy?" he asks, baffled. Such anonymity is completely contrary to the ways of the heroes he knows; most of them are all too eager to boast of their feats of glory, reveling in the fame and attention that such heroics bring. Only Loki ever went to any efforts to veil himself, so that none could follow his doings - and only because he knew how poorly his countrymen would view his ways and means. If this spider truly is a hero, and Hawkeye seems to confirm that he is, then why should he hide?

Hawkeye shrugs. "I'm sure he has reasons," he says in a neutral voice. Loki can tell by his tone that he has some answers, or at least guesses, that he chooses not to share. "You'll have to ask him."

Perhaps he intends to pique Loki's curiosity; if so, he does not have to work very hard. "Very well," Loki says, handing the tablet back. "He keeps a regular patrol schedule, does he not? Let us find an appropriate spot to meet with him."

"You read my mind," Hawkeye says cheerily.

They come to a stop at the mouth of a narrow alley, too cramped and littered for even the most determined New York driver.

"Up there." Hawkeye indicates a ledge high above the street, blocked from view by the crumbling stonework lip of the decaying building. "He usually stops there for a break, probably because there's no roof access from this building so he can't be interrupted."

"Oh, can't he?" Loki muses, looking up the pocked brick-and-mortar wall. "Perhaps I should drop in, as you would say."

"Go for it, boss." Hawkeye throws him a thumbs-up - the meaning is clear even if the gesture is unfamiliar - and vanishes around the corner, most likely to scale a different building to get a vantage point. Loki spends another moment surveying the approaches, then casts a small gravity flux around him and casually strolls up the wall (which is now, for him, the floor.)

It's an interesting perspective from which to survey the city, and Loki is still contemplating the view when a soft distinctive _thwipping_  sound catches his ear. He turns his head as a blur of motion resolves itself into a man, swinging on the end of a long silver-sheening line, who uses the momentum to launch into the air above the rooftop and come down to a perfect three-point landing.

Veiled by his seith, Loki studies his new prospective recruit intently as he crosses the rooftop and tips over the corner, crawling on all fours a clear, flat area and then adopting a casual lounging pose in the shade. As Spider-Man pulls a small canteen of water out of his belt packs, Loki walks over to the same area of wall he clings to and sits down, mirroring Spider-Man's pose before he drops the concealment. The wall-crawler chokes and drops his canteen, flailing in a most amusing manner before he manages to recover his poise. "Gah! Where the dickens did  _you_  come from?"

"Oh, you just made this stretch of roof look so comfortable, I had to try it out," Loki says pleasantly.

Spider-Man looks him over, taking in his casual cross-legged pose and horizontal gravitational orientation, and does a satisfying double-take. "So I guess you're not here to fight, or else I'd have sensed you coming," he says. "But who  _are_  you?" he asks.

"I am Loki Liesmith," Loki says, turning to look him over in return. His bright red and black costume resolves itself on closer inspection to a bodysuit shot all over with silver threads, most likely thematic of the webs he used to transport himself. He is shorter than Loki expected and slender of build, surprisingly so given the casual strength he displayed in the video.

It is difficult to read Spider-Man's expressions through his mask, but Loki thinks he looks taken aback. "Um, is that Loki as in like, a Norse Mythology-themed hero who just  _calls_  himself after Loki?" he asks hopefully.

Loki can't stop his eyebrows, as well as the corners of his lips, from lifting. "No. There is only one Loki, and only ever has been, and I am he," he says. When Spider-Man's body language remains dubious, he adds, "Had I been able to  _choose_  one of the Norse pantheon to associate myself with, don't you think I would have picked one of the less controversial ones?"

"Oh. Maybe not. Okay, you've got a point there." He looks over Loki, looks down the hundred feet to the alley floor, and visibly decides not to argue the point. "So, um, what can I help you with?"

"Actually, I was hoping we could help each other," Loki says smoothly.

That only serves to make the Spider more wary. "How so?" he asks.

"Hey!" a voice calls out from the opposite rooftop, and both of them look up to see Hawkeye perching at the edge of the next building over, hefting a mid-sized bundle wrapped in paper napkins. "This show of acrobatics is impressive and all, but if you want hot dogs, you'll have to come and get them!"

The three of them sit on the asphalt roof, warmed by the setting sun, looking out over the cityscape as they eat their roasted dog. Loki opts to stay in the gravity flux as he does so, just for the disturbed and fascinated looks he gets from the other two as the beverages, in his hand, staunchly ignore the regular laws of gravity.

"You want me to join a team?" Spider-Man says. He sounds excited by the prospect, but also dismayed. "A team of heroes?"

"Yep, an all-star lineup, featuring yours truly, Captain America, and the Norse God of fucking around," Hawkeye says, and Loki flicks a mustard-stained kerchief at him in annoyance.

"Wow," Spider-Man says. He hasn't taken the mask off to eat, rolling it up just enough to expose his mouth, which now tightens in dismay. "I'd really like to. But, I don't know if I can."

"Why not?" Hawkeye wants to know.

Spider-Man looks down at the rooftop. "Well, you guys work for the government, and all that," he mumbles. "Somehow I don't think they'd like having someone on the roster if they don't even know his real name."

Hawkeye raises his eyebrows. "Your secret identity means that much to you?" he asks.

"I have people I want to protect, mister," Spider-Man says sincerely. "And I've got enemies out there who won't hesitate to use them against me."

"It matters not," Loki says, with a flick of his fingers. "You would not be answering to any government, American or otherwise. You would only answer to me. And if you are a true comrade-in-arms whose hand is steady and whose heart is true, then I could not care less whether you choose to hide your face."

Hawkeye makes a face at him behind Spider-Man's back, but Loki ignores him. He needs every hand he can get to face against the invasion of the Chitauri; he has little time to waste on the niceties of proper identification.

"Tell you what," Hawkeye says. "You don't have to release your identity to the public - in fact, it's better that you don't, for all the reasons you said and a bunch more besides. But if you're going to be fighting next to us, I think we at least deserve to know your face. Heads off all sorts of potential complications down the road, otherwise. I mean, how would we know that you're really yourself behind that mask, and not someone who stole your suit and is impersonating you?"

Loki thinks of shapeshifters, cutting the skin off the body of their victims and morphing it to their own, bites his tongue and says nothing.

Spider-Man considers this for a long moment, then nods and stands up. "That's fair," he says, and takes a long swig of the soda before he sets it down and dusts off his gloved hands. "All right. Here goes."

He reaches up and pulls the mask off over his head, revealing a dark head of close-cropped, curly hair. His eyes are a warm, rich brown, and his skin the same color as Heimdall the Shining. "Hi," he says, a little nervous under the weight of their stares. "I'm Miles. Miles Morales, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man."

 

* * *

 

They return to their temporary base at the SHIELD facility with Spider-Man in tow, much to the amazement of Steve Rogers.

"Spider-Man?" Rogers frankly boggles as the teenager settles himself on the wall, his pose bizarrely casual in his horizontal orientation. "Wait, wait, I read about you! But didn't you die?"

"Ehhh..." Spider-Man jumps from the wall to the ceiling, then hangs from a thread of webbing to look sideways at the Captain. "Nobody ever really stays dead in this business.  _You'd_  know that, I thought."

"Back on the topic," Hawkeye says, rapping a spoon on the glass table to catch everyone's attention. "So with our current rate of growth, we're going to need a new clubhouse."

"Can't we stay here?" Rogers wants to know.

Hawkeye shrugs. "Not permanently, and the longer we stay, the more oversight Fury is gonna want into our operations," he says. "We need an external base of operations, and soon. Loki's an alien, Steve hasn't owned property since nineteen-forty, and if Spidey here can't even tell his parents what he does in his spare time, somehow I doubt they'd be okay with him inviting a bunch of superheroes to live in his garage."

"Not particularly," Spider-Man mutters from the ceiling.

"We're also going to have to think about supplies and funding," Rogers chips in, surprisingly practical - though perhaps not so surprising, coming from a soldier. "I mean, I assume that Fury's pocketbook isn't exactly bottomless either."

Loki frowns. As a Prince of Asgard he has never had to worry about such concerns before; but he cannot keep stealing gold from vaults forever, and Midgardians seem to frown upon the creation of money with magic (for some reason.)

And yet - "I do not wish to be bogged down by such mundane concerns," he says. "We are not yet strong enough in our current numbers to resist an assault. We need more heroes."

"Right, well, I've got an idea," Hawkeye says, and taps quickly on the tablet before him to call up a portrait. "Three birds with one stone. If we get  _this_  guy in on our project, then our money, space and firepower requirements will all be handily served."

He flips the tablet over for them, and Loki feels his heart drop queasily into his stomach. It's Tony Stark.

Since Loki and Rogers are both staring dumbly at the face frozen on the tablet, it falls to Spider-Man to flip right-side up, reach out and take the tablet from Hawkeye's hand. "Hey," he says. "That's Tony Stark, isn't it? CEO of Stark Industries?"

"Yup," Clint says. "Also known as Iron Man, one of the biggest names in the cape scene. In terms of pure firepower he's average-to-strong, but he's got enough maneuverability and utility packed into that suit that we definitely want him on our team."

Loki says nothing, exerting all his self control not to hunch his shoulders, pull away, or in any way reveal the sick pain that is twisting his stomach. He still can't forget the hollow, scraped-out feeling when Tony denounced him in SHIELD's cells.

Logically, objectively, he knows that having Tony on their team is the wisest course - but he doesn't know if he can survive having to live in close quarters with Tony again, not so soon. Besides, Tony doesn't exactly have a proven success record against the Chitauri fleet ( _then again_ , a snide whisper reminds him,  _neither do_ _you_  ) - the last time he'd fought against them, he'd  _died_.

Rogers sits up straight, eyes widening with surprise and realization. "Wait a moment, Tony  _Stark_? " he asks. "Any relation to Howard Stark?"

"His only son and heir," Hawkeye replies. "Howard Stark got his start as an industrialist and got big after the World War Two ended - you met him a few times during the war, didn't you?"

"More than just a few times," Rogers says emphatically. "He was part of my... my project. He was a brilliant scientist, a brilliant engineer. And crazy brave. Sounds like his son definitely followed in his footsteps."

"The crazy part, at least," Spider-Man remarks.

Rogers stands up, his mouth firming in determination. "I want to meet my friend's son," he says. "Loki, if it's all right with you, I'll be the one to go with you to recruit him."

"Uh, I'm not so sure that's a good idea," Hawkeye puts in quickly. "Stark's smart as hell, sure, but he can be difficult. I mean _really_  difficult. There's a reason SHIELD dropped him from the original Initiative project. He takes some pretty delicate handling. I think it would be better if I went along."

"Why not?" Loki says unexpectedly, speaking up in this conversation for the first time. He looks over at Rogers, a slow and deliberate smile curving over his face. "I am sure that Tony Stark has nothing but the fondest feelings towards his dear father's old war chums. Certainly he'll wish to meet you, so that you can tell him  _all_  about how much he resembles his father when he was young."

"Exactly!" Rogers agrees enthusiastically. He is too pleased by the thought of making a connection to his lost, nostalgic past to listen to any of Clint's warnings, and Loki does nothing to disabuse him of this notion. He is enjoying the feel of warm wickedness that bubbles up in his stomach at the thought of the impending meeting; it's been far too long since he's seen such fireworks, let alone had a chance to light the fuse himself.

* * *

Another week finds them one of the many small workshops scattered about Stark Tower, after days of wrangling with Stark's minions to grant them the favor of Tony Stark's time and presence. Loki suspects there was some background strong-arming involved, via Fury through Hawkeye, to get them this audience at all.

Tony whirls about the workshop, a flurry of activity as he spins his wheeled chair from lab table to desk to terminal. The lights overhead are dim orange, and the vivid blue glow of the computer screens cast harsh shadows in every direction; there's nothing to drink or even sit down. Tony himself doesn't even bother to look up at his visitors as JARVIS escorts them in, and Loki knows him well enough to know that this is how he establishes his dominance: to bring them into the heart of his place of power and then pretend they don't even exist before him. But Loki doesn't fail to notice the dull-colored, LED speckled metal of the bracelets encircling his arms, ensuring that he can call his suit to him at a moment's notice.

"Thanks for letting us come," Rogers tells him earnestly. "It's good to meet you, Tony Stark. I'm Steve Rogers, and this is Loki... uh..."

He fumbles for a moment, looking at Loki for appeal, but Loki says nothing. Seeing Tony's face on the tablet was nothing compared to being in a  _room_  with him again, feeling a whirlwind of love and fury and betrayal and yearning and fear of being hurt again all pulling him in different directions.

" Liesmith." It's Tony instead who fills in the gap, turning his chair around to face them with a final flourishing tap on the keyboard. Although he's talking about Loki, his eyes stay firmly fixed on Steve. "Formerly known as the Minneapolis Magician, claims to be a two-millennium old Norse God, seems to be fond of fire. Also horses. Why are you in my house?"

Rogers looks a little taken aback, either by Tony's rudeness or the intensity of his gaze, Loki isn't sure. "We're putting together a team of superheroes," he explains, after a sidelong look at Loki once again fails any appeal. Loki is as locked onto Tony as Tony is on Steve, intent as a snake stalking its prey. "We'd like you to join."

"Oh I just bet you would." Tony smiles widely, but it doesn't go anywhere near his eyes. His business-dinner smile, he always called it, and Loki only used to see it in videos and press tablets the next day, because Tony never wore it around him. "  _So_  many people are after the suit these days, it's hard being so popular, what can I say. The FBI, the CIA, the KGB, the WGA. Can't really blame them of course, not when I've got the proprietary tech that packs a bomber fleet's worth of ammunition into one volley, all with the most up-to-date programmable FoF smart guidance technology. To say nothing of the repulsor technology that oh,  _no one_  else in the world has been able to duplicate; and the sweet nutty center of all this gorgeous tech shell is of course the unmatchable brain of Tony Stark. Yeah, I  _bet_ you want me on your team, so I guess my question is -"

Tony comes to his feet and he doesn't even give them a chance to answer before he's pacing back and forth. "My question is, why should  _I_  want to be part of  _your_  little babysitter's club. What have you possibly got to offer me? One of Fury's trained monkeys? Some lowlife vigilante from Queens who won't even tell the world his real name? A circus strongman decked out in primary colors, and a..." he turns to face Loki, waving his hand in a gesture that encompasses all of Loki. "Whatever all this is supposed to be."

Rogers is still sputtering, he's not halfway through Tony's first rant. "How - how do you know all this?" he demands. "We haven't made any kind of announcements, we've been staying at SHIELD's secure facilities -"

"He's been hacking SHIELD's files, of course," Loki interrupts for the first time, his voice a bored drawl. Steve turns to look at him, a look of bafflement on his face that says he clearly hasn't caught up with this era's computer terminology yet. "Stealing information from them. Spying," Loki clarifies.

"Stealing?" Rogers demands, turning back to Tony with a look of outrage. "That's completely unethical! Those files are confidential for darn good reasons!"

Tony is staring at Loki now, seemingly unnerved by the god's intent gaze. "If you're really an alien viking," he says, "how the hell do you even know what computer files are?"

"Oh, please," Loki says with a derisive roll of his eyes. "Technology is only magic to those primitives not advanced enough to understand it. Don't imagine that our technology isn't worlds ahead of yours simply because  _you_  can't comprehend it."

"Look," Rogers says, physically interposing himself between Loki and Tony - as though Tony could possibly hope to harm him, if he foolishly tried to attack Loki barehanded. "We didn't come here to pick a fight. We came here to offer an alliance."

"Yeah, you've got a funny way of showing it," Tony spits.

"No, listen," Steve says. "Back during the war, Howard and Peggy and the Commandoes and I, we all learned to put aside our differences and work together. We didn't have a choice. We learned to rely on each other, to trust one another with our backs and our weaknesses. We learned to carry each other.

"And even when it seemed the most bleak and helpless, we stayed together, and  _we won,_  in the face of impossible odds. These days it seems like people would rather go their own way, like it's not trendy any more to have friends or rely on each other. But we all have more to offer, too. We all bring things to the table that others don't have, we all complete each other. And together, we are more than the sum of our parts. Together, we can accomplish anything!"

For a moment his passionate, idealistic words seem to hang in the air, a ring of glittering gold. But Tony turns away, face cold, eyes brittle. "As far as I'm concerned, you've got nothing to bring to the table that I need," he bites out. "Nostalgia from the 1940s? No thanks. I got enough of that 'greatest generation' bullshit growing up."

"Hey," Rogers says, and even his earnest politeness is wearing a bit thin in the teeth of Tony's attitude. "I knew your father, you know. Howard. The things he accomplished - he changed the world. You could do the same."

Loki sits back and watches, delighted, as mention of Tony's father has the exact opposite effect that Rogers intended. "Well, guess what, I already have," Tony sneers. "Without your help. Or  _his_. "

"What's your problem with your old man?" Rogers says disbelievingly. "He was a great man. He helped make me what I am."

"Oh yeah? And  _what_  are you?" Tony springs to the attack, stepping forward and jabbing his finger into Rogers' chest, driving the bigger man back despite the almost laughable disparity between their size and strength. "So you're big and strong. So frigging what? What good is it to bench press 500 in a world where a push of a button can launch a hundred smart-tracking drones on a single location? Wars aren't fought by fists any more, they're fought by smarts. And the super-soldier serum didn't give you any of those, now did they." He shoves backwards and Rogers, stunned by the tirade, lets himself be pushed back. "Face it, soldier boy, you're obsolete, and  _I don't need you. "_

He steps away and deliberately turns his back on Rogers. "I've been privatizing world peace just fine on my own, thanks, before you clowns came along. So go play in your little clubhouse - I'll be over here, saving the world."

"How arrogant you are," Loki's soft voice drops into the room like a drop of oil falling into a tank of water. "To imagine yourself the equal of all the world's foes. You are nothing but a mortal man, a hermit crab helpless without your shell. If you foolishly keep at it alone, you  _will_  meet your end. You'll do no good to anyone dead."

Tony turns towards him, his brow tightly knitted over a fake smile. "Was - that a threat?" he asks, and then forces a chuckle. "Because, you know, that sounded awfully like a threat."

"I merely speak the truth," Loki brushes off the accusation. "A shame you're too wrapped up in yourself to accept it. Too steeped in your own comfortable lifestyle to accept an unpleasant truth when it stares you in the face."

"Look, pretty boy, what's your problem?" Tony starts, really focusing on Loki for the first time and matching unease with bravado as he always does. Loki loves it, revels in it, ready for a match that will tear them both to pieces - he has all the ammunition in this fight, he can't possibly lose.

"Don't you call him that!" Rogers breaks in unexpectedly, and the outrage in his voice takes Loki aback. It takes him a moment to make the connection - to his ears, Tony's aggressive flirting is just a part of his personality. But to Rogers, from an older, more conservative time, to append such a name to another man would be a grave insult.

"I call it like I see it," Tony returns. "Why, are you jealous that I don't think  _you're_  pretty? Sorry, blonds don't really do it for me."

"You watch your mouth when you talk about my friends," Rogers says, sounding more offended on Loki's behalf than he ever was on his own. Loki is surprised, then touched despite himself. There were many times in his youth that those without the wisdom to fear the All-Father's reprisal would whisper argr behind his back - and none ever stood up for him then, save for Thor.

"Or else what!" Tony snaps. "Who are you to stand in my own home and order me around? You started as nothing, and if not for my dad, that's what you'd still be. Everything that's special about you came out of a  _bottle_."

"And you?" Rogers says with a sneer. "Little man in a big suit of armor. Take that off, and what are you?"

"A genius, philanthropist, billionaire playboy," Tony quips.

"How sad," Loki slips in cooly, inserting himself into their confrontation like a dagger. "When called upon to describe your worth, the best you can think to say for yourself is that you were born into your daddy's money."

Tony's teeth grind so hard Loki can almost hear them crack, and the tablet pen he'd been fidgeting with warps and sputters in his grip. "Bullshit," he grates. "That - that's bullshit. Stark Industries' value has gone up tenfold since I've been CEO. He might have left me a nest egg but I made it a fortune.  _I_  did that."

"Yes, indeed," Loki agrees sweetly. "And how many weapons did you sell to make that fortune? What an empire you've built here, on the backs of the innocents who died to serve your vanity? And now you use your blood money to play  _hero_. " He sneers the word. "What hypocrisy."

For a long moment the room is silent, except for the beating of three hearts. At last Tony breaks the silence, his voice calm and deliberate. "You'll be leaving my tower in the next five minutes," he says. "You can choose to walk out on your own feet, or leave through the window. It's really up to you."

Once they're back on the street Rogers gulps deep breaths, as though the laboratory had been filled with a miasma of filth that he needs to replace with clean air. "Geez, I'm glad to be out of there." He strides off down the street, Loki falling into step on his heels. "Forget him. We don't need him on our team. We don't need anyone like him."

But the truth is, they do, and Loki knows it; now that he's had a chance to vent some of his bitter spleen, he's guiltily aware that they need Tony as much as they ever have. But it's too late now to take back the words of today; he'll just have to hope that when the invasion starts, Tony will be able to put his pride aside and offer to join his forces to theirs.

"Thanks for sticking up for me back there," Rogers adds unexpectedly, and Loki has to stop himself for laughing incredulously. Is that what Rogers thinks that was about? Loki didn't do it for  _him_ , not for one moment. But perhaps that was why Rogers jumped to his defense so readily when he thought Tony had impinged his honor.

"It is of no moment," Loki manages to say, accepting the thanks gracefully. "We are comrades, are we not, Captain Rogers?"

"Steve," Rogers says, turning those earnest blue eyes on him full-power. "We're teammates now, so you should call me Steve."

He holds out his hand, and Loki turns the name over in his mind, testing it on his silver tongue. At last he holds out his hand and return, but he bypasses Rogers' open palm to clasp his forearm in a warrior's embrace. "Steve, then," he says, and smiles.

* * *

"Well, that was an unmitigated fuckup," Hawkeye says.

It has not been a good week for the team. First there was Loki and Steve's disastrous interview with Stark, and Hawkeye has made no better progress on his leads. Bruce Banner still is not answering their calls; T'Challa, the Black Panther, has formally declined to enlist on their team. The archer is annoyed and frustrated (they all are,) and it renders his usual good humor flat and sarcastic.

On another day Loki would be glad to match wits with him in this mood, but in the wake of their disastrous conversation at Stark Tower, Loki is in no state to appreciate his needling. "What happened to your famous silver tongue, huh boss?" Hawkeye demands.

"He annoyed me," Loki says flatly, with the clear ominous implication:  _and if you continue to make me annoyed, you may find yourself missing a few key fingers._

"He annoys everybody!" Hawkeye says, aggravated. "We wanted him on the team for his firepower and money, not his sparkling personality."

"It's not his fault," Steve says, quick now to come to Loki's defense. "Stark was riding on his high horse before Loki even opened his mouth. Insulting you, and me, and Spider-Man for no good reason but to make himself feel bigger. Calling us vigilantes - like what he does is any different! Loki was just defending us."

"Look," Spider-Man speaks up, from his corner. "If my presence on the team is such a deal-breaker, I can clear out. I'm sure he'd be a more valuable team member than me."

"No, you stay put," Steve says firmly, in his most authoritative tone. "You're one of us now. We're not going to let a..." He gropes for a word, and it's almost funny to watch him struggle against the ingrained manners of an older time. "...a  _jackass_  like him, chase you off the team."

"Well..." Spider-Man shifts uncomfortably, unease clear in his posture despite the mask. "To tell the truth, I was thinking of going anyway."

"What?" Loki says, jolted out of his brooding.

"Why?" Steve demands.

Spider-Man shrugs, nervous and ill-fitting. "I've got duties back home, you know," he says quietly. "There are still people on the streets of New York who need my help - help they're not gonna get if I'm not there. I've been thinking I should go back to where I  _know_  I make a difference, and leave the big deals to the big team players."

Hawkeye gives an angry snort. "If there is even going to  _be_  a team," he says. "The way this is going, Fury's likely to call the whole thing a wash and send out our recall orders tomorrow. There's sure to be a hot mess somewhere in, I don't know, Cambodia, that would be more productive than herding cats here - "

"No, you cannot!" Loki orders, suddenly panicked. Things are falling apart even in his hands and they cannot, too much is riding on this, the Chitauri are coming and he  _must_  have a team to fight them. "You are needed here!"

"All of you are needed," he says more quietly. .He turns to Spider-Man, launches his appeal. "You feel a great responsibility to your fellow man, I understand that. But the place to make your stand is at the forefront of the battle, not a failing retreat through home territory. What good will your defense of the little streets do if the front line falls beneath the advance of the enemy?"

Spider-Man frowns at him, the narrowing eyes and downturned mouth visible even through the mask. "What  _enemy_ are we talking about, anyway?"

Silence falls in the little underground room, thick and heavy. Loki did not mean to let it swelter so, pregnant with implication, but he is caught unawares and cannot think what to say to deflect their attention.

"You know," Steve comments after a long moment, "this isn't the first time you've said something about that. You said so to me, too, when you were convincing me to join up. Something about an enemy coming from beyond that we have to fight?"

Loki says nothing. He cannot tell them the truth, even if they ask, even if he wishes. They would not understand, they would not believe; all that he has worked for will be in vain.

"You got intel you want to share with the class, boss?" Hawkeye inquires.

For a long, agonizing moment, Loki hesitates. Truth does not serve him, honesty is not his friend, and yet - and yet these mortals know nothing of his past, his reputation. They only know him as a fellow hero, and Steve at least has already placed an unwarranted amount of trust in him. Maybe - maybe...

The tableau is broken by the harsh sound of a buzzer, indicating a visitor at the front door. Steve and Hawkeye exchange glances, then the latter walks over and looks through the peephole. "Huh," he grunts in surprise. "It's Coulson. Wonder what he's doing here?"

Without awaiting further word, Hawkeye undoes the locks and bolts and throws the door open. Agent Coulson steps inside, dry and unsmiling, holding a thin black envelope.

"Ah, Agent." Loki is not terribly pleased to see him. Coulson has usually been the bearer of bad tidings, in his experience with the man; on the heels of the argument they've been having, he can't help but wonder if Coulson has come to spirit half of his team away. Still, he welcomes the distraction. "You return, like a bad penny."

Ignoring the gibe, Coulson nods around to each of them. "Good evening, gentlemen," he says, then gives a special nod to Steve, straightening himself up for an informal salute. "Captain Rogers."

Steve looks at him, puzzled. "Have we met?"

"This is Special Agent Phil Coulson, of SHIELD," Hawkeye introduces them, then raises an eyebrow at their visitor. "What's up, Coulson?"

"I've got news that may concern you," Coulson says. "I didn't think you'd want to hear it first on television."

"What, you couldn't just send an e-mail?" Spider-Man asks.

"We wanted to be absolutely certain this was kept secure."

Impatiently, Loki interrupts to hurry the conversation along. "What tidings do you bring that could possibly be so important?" he edmands.

"Tony Stark is dead," Coulson says.

Silence reigns around the tiny room once again.

 _"What?"_  Hawkeye says at last. Loki can't even manage that much. His stomach feels like it's dropped right through to his boots. He'd never dreamed this would happen, he'd never wanted this, not for a moment. Just days ago Tony had been alive and trading barbs with them. And yes, Loki had been angry with him, and yes, he'd wanted to make him angry, upset, to watch him squirm.

But he'd never imagined Tony would  _die._  Never wanted...

Coulson is still talking, his mouth grinding out a steady flow of dull, hateful words. "The details are still sketchy, but here's what we know," he says. He opens the black folder, pulls a couple of pages to his fingertips. "There's an illicit think tank organization known as A.I.M., which has been trying to replicate Stark's Iron Man technology for some time. Two days ago they sent him a message, the content of which we still don't know, but it was enough to prompt Stark to fly out to one of their facilities."

Of course he did, Loki thinks bitterly. Of course, it's Tony; reckless, arrogant, showoff. He knows himself to be so clever, he believes...  _believed_  that he was the smartest one in the room, never conceiving that anyone else could possibly outsmart him.

"They were waiting for him," Coulson states flatly. "They used an EMP burst specially attuned to the frequency of Stark's suit, temporarily disabling him, and followed it up with a faceful of paralyzing gas. While they were in the process of extracting him from his suit, Stark regained consciousness. What happened next we're not certain, but the suit exploded, killing his assailants and also, unfortunately, Stark himself."

Silence. No one has anything to say. Coulson looks from one of them to another, shifts in something that might be discomfort. Coughs quietly, clears his throat. "The explosion alerted SHIELD forces in the area, and we moved in to recover... the situation." A slight hesitation there, and Loki wonders numbly whether he was avoiding saying 'the body' or just 'the armor.' "We're still not certain whether it was a deliberate activation of his self-destruct protocols, or ... something else."

"No... no, he wouldn't have done that," Steve says adamantly, shaking his head. "He wouldn't have killed himself, not on purpose. That wasn't suicide, it was  _murder_."

Coulson nods slightly. Not in agreement with Steve's assessment, but in acceptance. "Whether it was or wasn't," he says, "the ones who attacked him are dead. Confirmed."

Spider-Man interrupts, his voice tense. "But their bosses are still alive, aren't they?" he asks. Coulson doesn't respond or react, and that's as good as confirmation.

"What are our orders?" Hawkeye says. His voice almost cracks. "What does SHIELD want us to do?"

"SHIELD?" Coulson looks surprised. "Nothing. We're passing on the information as a courtesy, but we don't command you."

He tucks the paper sheets back into the black folder, closes it, and lays it down on the coffee table. Pointedly so. "Thank you for your time, gentlemen," he says, and walks out.

"Well, shit," Hawkeye says into the silence. That really seems to cover it.

"I can't believe it," Spider-Man says unsteadily. "I mean - Tony Stark? Iron Man? He was the big hitter, he always seemed - untouchable. I can't believe some two-bit mooks actually took him out."

"I warned him." The words are out of his mouth before Loki can stop them, propelled by the force of his anguish and anger. "I _warned_  him what would happen if he didn't take care, if he kept foolishly insisting on going out alone." His fingers tangle in the ends of his long hair, without thinking about it, and pull. "This would never have happened if he had comrades to watch his back - this should never -"

"For heaven's sake, Loki," Steve exclaims, swinging round on him with blue eyes blazing. "Is this really the time for this? A man just  _died_  and all you can think of is building your little empire? I know that you may not have felt anything for Stark himself, but -"

Loki is on his feet before he knows it, and biting green magic crackles in the space around him, causing everyone's ears to  _pop_  in the sudden pressure differential and the lights in the room to dim. He has to struggle to pull it back, rein himself in, but he still has the shocked eyes of everyone in the room on him as he hisses, "Do not  _presume_  to tell me, Captain, what I do and do not  _feel!"_

The sound of shattered glass hitting the tile comes to Loki's attention, and he realizes that he inadvertently destroyed the bare lightbulbs that illuminated the room. Loki will never understand why the mortals rely on such things, compared to the eternal flames of the torches and lanterns of Asgard. Fragile blown spheres of glass, so delicate, so easily shattered -

So brilliant.

A burst of some unnamable emotion seizes him, and Loki grabs for his  _seidh_ before it can drown him. The claustrophobic little dark room shifts and dissolves about him, and Loki hears the roar of the Void around him before the world returns around him - the rooftop of the SHIELD facility.

He cannot think. His head is swimming and he can't get past the mantra that fills his brain, drowning out all other thought. Tony Stark is dead, slain,  _murdered._  He should have had companions, teammates to watch his back. He should have had  _Loki,_  and all of the others. If Loki hadn't deliberately sabotaged their negotiations by bringing Steve along, when he knew perfectly well how much Tony detested Captain America - if he had turned his efforts towards placating and flattering Tony, instead of flinging more fuel on the fire at every turn...

Then Tony would not be dead today.

He'd never meant for this. He'd always meant to go back to Tony later, after his hurt and anger and resentment had run its course ( _much_  later.) He'd always meant to talk Tony around, bring him onto the team, to strengthen them both. But he hadn't, and now he'll never have the chance.

Tony is dead and the last words Loki ever spoke to him were of cruel rancor. He will never get the chance to take it back, and make it right; there is nothing he can do to fix this, nothing he can do...

_Nothing?_

What is he thinking? Of course there is something he can do! He can start again. Nothing bad or sad ever has to stay true while he holds the power of time in his hands.

With that thought, it is as if a great weight is lifted from him; he can breathe and lift his head once more. The idea fills him with a feeling like a glowing warmth; he very nearly floats off his feet with the excitement of it.

He can return to the Void, reset the timeline, come back and gather his heroes again. This time, he will not allow his feelings to interfere. This time, he will find a way to convince Tony Stark not to go into battle alone.

 _Will you truly?_  a little voice asks him. _You never could before. Never. No matter how you try, this is one thing you never can change._

He ignores it.

He turns back towards the ugly SHIELD facility, the quarters where the others wait. He is eager to leave, but he knows there is no rush - no matter when he leaves, he will arrive at precisely the same moment. At the very least he will say goodbye - even if the others do not know that it is goodbye. He will meet with them one last time, these could-have-been comrades, these might-have-been friends, before they all scatter to the winds to meet doom on their own terms. But one way or another, Loki will see to it that doom never comes.

He walks into the meeting room and stops, all eyes in the room turning to him as one. When he'd left they were polarized, each in their own corner of the room (or in Spider-Man's case, the ceiling) as though the presence of the others repelled them. Now, somehow, they are all sitting on the same couch, waiting for him.

Steve stands up and speaks for them. "Loki," he says. "I just wanted to apologize for what I said before. I didn't realize - I mean, I wasn't aware that you knew Tony so well. I wouldn't have said what I did if I'd known."

Loki turns away, avoiding their gaze. He revealed more than he meant to in his moment of grief and fury. There is no way that he could have met Stark in this timeline before, and his teammates surely must know it.

Fortunately, Steve doesn't seem like he wants to pursue the point right now. "We want you to know," he says solemnly, "that we've talked it over and we - I - think you're right. About Tony, and about working as a team."

Loki turns to stare at him. Opens his mouth, can force out no sound, and must close it and clear his throat before he can try again. "I - what?" he demands.

"There's some pretty dangerous baddies out there," Spider-Man says solemnly, and okay, he still can't sit like a normal human being, but at least he's perched on the back of the couch and not the back wall. "I wouldn't want to run up against some of them alone, without backup. And I sure wouldn't want any of them to get past me and go after ordinary folks, just because I was too proud to call for help."

"What we're saying is that we're staying on the team," Hawkeye chips in, and exchanges a solemn look with Steve. "No matter what Fury thinks about it. We're stronger together than we are alone, and we can do more. And that's worth fighting for, worth more than a little inconvenience or irritation."

"And besides," Steve says, looking suddenly fierce, "those bastards killed my friend's  _son_. Somebody's got to take them down."

As he looks from one of their faces to the next, Loki is nearly floored by the overwhelming urge to weep. Not because the man he loves is dead (again;) no, it is because he suddenly realizes that this death was  _necessary_. It is the push they need to come together as a team, to put aside their petty quarrels and mundane concerns in the face of the greater good. Could anything else unite them so thoroughly as a death among them, and the realization that any one of them could be next?

They are waiting for him to speak. He swallows, forcing down his grief, his guilt, the desolation that comes with knowing that he could undo this - but he will not. He can not, not if he still hopes to save the world.

"Our comrade has fallen to battle and treachery," Loki says hoarsely. "As we are warriors - as we are men - we must avenge him."

 

* * *

 

The buzzer goes off, and the lights in the training room turn blue. All of the Avengers stop what they're doing, and heave a sigh of relief that is nearly a groan as the robotic drones cease their attacks and hang motionless in the air. Slowed to a standstill, they make an almost ridiculous sight: an army of metallic balls or wobbly stick-figure bodies like a child's clumsy drawing. But their unornamented appearance hides a vast array of blades, bullets and laser beams.

Of course the blades are dulled, the bullets rubber, and the laser beams do no more than slightly singe. This is a training room, after all, not an abattoir.

Last autumn the Avengers teamed up with the X-Men to thwart a plot by Magneto to take over a small island in the Floridian keys, to make a mutant haven and a staging ground for further attacks. After hearing Xavier's proteges describe their 'danger room,' a training arena where they hone their skills, the team was inspired to build their own. Loki had endorsed the idea enthusiastically, of course; sparring with the other Avengers, while invigorating, does not do much to teach them to work together to defend against an outside threat.

"All right, everyone, the threat is zero," Steve calls out over his headset, voice steady despite the fatigue. "Switching to clean-up mode. Now, I know you're all tired, but just make sure to touch on every item on the checklist before you take off. Wasp and Hawkeye, sweep for 'survivors.' Spider-Man, Goliath, clear the area. Loki, stand sentry until they're done. I would be directing emergency vehicle traffic and making official statements. Once you're done, head back to the mansion, take a rest and hit the showers if you need to. "

The team members move to follow his orders obediently, although fatigue slows their movements. It is hard to muster much enthusiasm for false chores, even though they know how important such tasks would be in a real battle. Nevertheless, they are all tired; today was an endurance trial, and they have been battling against the drones for over ten hours. Loki had insisted on it; they can not always assume that every threat they faced would be a mere skirmish, easy and quick to be over. He knows better. Much as he wishes it weren't so, he knows.

In the past two and a half years they have grown much as a team, and overcome many threats together; the assault on the A.I.M. headquarters was only the first of many. The paralyzing gas that had taken down Iron Man proved ineffective on his alien lungs, and their EMP blast useless against the combined (low-tech) might of Hawkeye, Captain America and Spider-Man. The battle had soon become a rout, with the leadership of A.I.M. retreating hastily into their secret bunker with the Avengers pursuing in hot blood.

Rather than surrender themselves and their research, the leaders of A.I.M. had chosen to initiate a self-destruct sequence on their hidden banks of research and information, to incinerate all evidence of their crimes. And if the exits to their lair had mysteriously jammed shut at the last moment, sealing all of the criminals inside while the flames burnt them slowly alive, well, that was certainly unfortunate, but they had brought it upon them with their own hands, had they not? It certainly had nothing to do with the Avengers who are, after all, heroes.

Thus was the death of Tony Stark avenged.

The Avengers have thrived since then; Loki has seen to it in a myriad of small ways. The mortal media loves them, even Spider-Man, after Loki had paid a small visit to Jameson to...  _cure_ him of his unreasonable dislike for the boy. Those who think to oppose their operations quickly find themselves changing their mind - or else disgraced and silenced.

All done very quietly, of course, and behind the scenes. But who would expect a hero - a comrade of the respected and venerated Captain America, even - of such underhanded deeds?

From the beginning Loki had hoped to recruit the infamous berserker, Bruce Banner, to his team; but the man proved elusive to all Loki's attempts to track him, and immune to all Clint's attempts to persuade him. SHIELD was not very helpful, claiming that Banner was 'too dangerous' to be brought back into the fold, which only went to show how skewed mortal priorities were. Of course great warriors were dangerous; what else made them great?

Nevertheless their ranks filled out with the addition of two more so-called 'Science Heroes,' Hank and Janet Pym. With their introduction on the team they gained a valuable font of knowledge, as well as the sponsor and space they'd badly needed - Janet van Dyne was heiress to the van Dyne fortune, and her spacious New York estate was quickly and easily converted into the Avengers Mansion.

Despite her fierce and sometimes abrasive attitude, Loki finds himself taking a liking to Jan. She was raised in high society, as he was, and he can recognize much of his old social training driving her apparently arrogant behavior. She is easy and pleasant to converse with, and despite her diva personality, she has a loving and generous heart underneath it. She reminds him of someone else he once knew, long since lost from grace.

Jan is mortal, as is her husband; both their powers come from Hank's scientific advances, a new and advanced kind of 'Pym particle' which allows them to grow or shrink in size and strength. It is an extremely limited form of magic, as far as Loki is concerned, but the two of them between them have devised some cunning and innovative forms of combat around it. Taking on the name 'Goliath,' Hank grows in size and strength to match it; as 'the Wasp,' Janet shrinks to such a tiny size that allows her to fly, and uses fierce electrical weapons of their own devising to deliver punishing stings from opportune angles. Those who think her weak for her small size soon learn painfully otherwise, a lesson Loki can more than appreciate.

They are brave and true, good warriors, and good friends. They are all of them true shield-companions, fierce and devoted in their defense of this world. When the day comes that the Chitauri invade, they will be ready, they will stand at the breach and turn back the tide. Thanos will be denied the blood and destruction he craves, and the Unmaker will stay bound in its grave.

Loki hopes.

* * *

The simulated 'clean-up' goes quickly, and one by one the Avengers complete their task and wander upstairs from the reinforced underground bunker to the main building of the Avengers mansion.

Jan flops onto one of the large overstuffed couches with a groan. "Oh, my aching back," she moans. "Ten hours in the air, with only two ten-minute breathers. My intercostals are positively  _killing_  me."

Clint, following her into the main sitting room, snorts with a distinct lack of sympathy. "Yeah, well, at least you drop your mass when you go all wasp-sized," he says, rotating his arm gingerly. "Try drawing a bow one thousand and forty-eight times in quick succession, then complain about shoulder pain."

"Pay no attention to that brute," Loki says, joining Jan on the sofa. "Those who have never experienced the joy of flight cannot understand the stress it places upon your frame. Flightless, grounded beasts that they are."

Jan whimpers. "Right now I'd trade all the joy of flight for a pack of icy-hot," she says.

"Poor, delicate flower," Loki coos, his voice mockingly saccharine. "Shall I make it better for you, lovely?"

He concentrates for a moment, and his hands spark and tingle as he conjures heat into them, then reaches out and begins to rub Jan's back and shoulders. She groans appreciatively, scrunching up along the sofa cushions and turning to better present her back to his hands.

"Oh, Loki, my sweet, you are my favorite Avenger," Jan says heartfeltly. "I owe you dearly for this. One million steak dinners, on the tab."

"Careful, her husband's gonna get jealous," Spider-Man advises as he walks in on the scene, sprawling across one of the settees. Both Jan and Loki snort.

"Really, Loki, we both know better," she says. "You know I'm not your type at  _all_ , too female, for a start."

Somehow - perhaps due to Loki's persistent disinterest in the fairer sex - his teammates have gotten the impression that he prefers men only. Loki could have provided centuries worth of examples to the contrary, but declines to do so - the truth is simply that he does not have  _time_  for the distractions and entanglements that romance (or even a simpler, more carnal fling) would provide.

Even if he could, a part of him is still raw from the memory of Tony's rejection, Tony's death. But he can't explain that to his teammates; they don't know. There are so many things they don't know, will never understand, that Loki knows better than to try and explain.

"I'm just in it for the custom outfits," Loki says instead.

"Yeah, we all know that Loki's your fabulous gay best friend," Clint says snarkily. "Seriously, could you be more of a stereotype? I half expect you two to have slumber parties and paint each other's nails."

Loki sniffs. "I do not subscribe to your silly Midgardian stereotypes," he says. "I am as I am, as I have ever been; I see no need to change myself to fit your labels." He gives Jan's shoulders a last comforting squeeze, then releases her and turns back to sprawl lazily against the back of the sofa. He is somewhat less tired than the rest of them, having far more stamina than even the 'enhanced' mortals; but he is enjoying the opportunity to rest in the company of his shield-brothers, exhausted from a day well spent.

"Good work today, everyone!" Steve says as he walks in the room; he gets various tired groans or waves in response, and chuckles awkwardly as he rubs his head. "Yeah, we kind of overdid it, maybe. But you guys held up to everything Hank's robots could throw at us, and more. You have every reason to be proud."

"So do we get a cookie, or just a gold star?" Clint asks.

"I'd settle for a pizza right now," Spider-Man says, surprising no one; he has been caught in a growth spurt for a year and a half now, and it leaves him with an enormous appetite. Between him, Steve, and Loki, who have similar appetites without the excuse of growing pains, it's lucky they have a millionaire's food budget to work with.

"Sure, let's do pizza," Steve says enthusiastically.

"Let us feast, then," Loki says. "We should be sure to patronize the establishment that serves those tiny chocolate things, they are most exquisite."

"It's a party!" Jan beams. "Good, I'm starving!"

"Well hey, wasps eat spiders, don't they?" Clint jokes, holding up his fingers by his jaw in imitations of insect mouthparts. "If you get peckish while you're waiting, you can always snack on Spidey here."

"Hey!" Spider-Man objects, and Jan aims a half-hearted swat at Clint from across the room; he grins insolently as he avoids her reach, only to yelp in shocked betrayal when she sends a quick spark from her stingers across the distance.

"And hawks devour both spiders and wasps, do they not?" Loki says lazily. "Well, we need not order any pizza for you; you can scrounge for your own meals."

"Hell, no!" Clint says, shuddering in feigned horror. "They're both too skinny, they wouldn't make a mouthful."

"All right, all right, I'm putting in the order," Steve calls out, from over by the phone. He's the only one in the house who still uses the wall-mounted device; everyone else uses the portable hand phones, save Loki who just uses magic. "What toppings does everyone want?"

"Mice and voles on yours," Loki tells Clint. "You must keep up with your image, after all."

"To hell with image," Clint says. "You know, on this team we have the Wasp, Spider-Man, Ant-Man -"

Hank coughs quietly. "Excuse me, it's 'Goliath' nowadays," he says. "I haven't been Ant-Man in years."

" - and Hawkeye," Clint says, ignoring Hank entirely, "we ought to change our names to The Entomologists, instead of The Avengers."

"How is Hawkeye an insect-themed hero?" Spider-Man wants to know.

"Yes, but then we'd have to start fighting bug-themed villains," Jan says, and shudders. "What a ghastly thought. And I'd have to design insect motifs for the rest of you. Actually, Loki darling, that's not such a bad idea; there are a few species of crowned beetle that are quite majestic, it wouldn't be such a change from your current armor at all - "

"I'm quite satisfied with my current incarnation, thank you," Loki says drily. If left to her own devices, Jan will find unending fascination in dressing Loki like a life-sized doll. He does not truly mind - Jan's clever fashion sense resonates well with Loki's own vanity, and her generosity has more than made up for the wardrobe Loki had to leave behind on Asgard. But even he must draw the line somewhere.

"Yeah, why give up the billy-goat-gruff look if you don't have to?" Clint hoots, and Loki decides he has had enough of the mortal's insolence for the night. He levitates a couch cushion and sends it chasing after Clint, threatening to smother him, while Clint yelps and scrambles and tries to pin the cushion to nearby surfaces with his arrows. Spider-Man calls out encouragement while Janet cries in outrage for her cushions, and the two of them join in the chase, readying cushions of their own for ammunition.

"Did you ever wonder how a mad scientist and a genetically engineered super-soldier ended up being the  _normal_  ones on this team?" Steve asks Hank, who sighs doleful agreement.

 

* * *

 

It is still hard to believe that he has been on Midgard for three years. At times the days and weeks seem to disappear in a flash, between training and sparring with the Avengers and battling mortal villains; at other times, he can hardly believe that it has been only three years, for all that has changed.

But the end of that time looms like a black gate before him, the inescapable knowledge of the deadline that has been set for them. Loki has not forgotten - cannot forget, not when he still awakens from nightmares of Midgard burning, Asgard crumbling. At times like that he rises from his bed and forces his mortal team-mates from theirs, insisting on more drills, more strategy, until some of the feeling of panic abates.

They go along with it, accepting his occasional fits of driven frenzy with an understanding he didn't expect. But then, the others have their own nightmares, too; their own bad days, their own memories which strike at them in the midst of a peaceful day and make them stand frozen or strike out wildly. They are also warriors, and they understand.

Three years. Loki has counted the dates, knows each one exactly; tomorrow night, the Chitauri will attempt to steal the Tesseract from the SHIELD facility. Ten more days after that, and the portal will open. The night before the Tesseract is due to be stolen, Loki breaks down and calls Fury to warn him about what is coming.

The working relationship between Loki and SHIELD - specifically, Fury - can best be described as  _strained._  Loki has ill memories of the man from past timelines, of the suspicion and paranoia that closes down his worldview until it makes him (in Loki's opinion) complete unsuitable to the role of Midgard's defender. That very same suspicion, in turn, gives Fury a very dim view of Loki, who insists on hiding most of his movements and motivations. They are rather more aware of Loki's under-the-table maneuvers on behalf of the Avengers than the Avengers are, and they disapprove - which is sheer cheek of them, Loki thinks, considering how often they perform just such dirty deeds themselves.

It also does not help that for the last year and a half Loki has been trying to find the Tesseract and, once he finds it, reclaim it from their custody. (Loki would not use a word so crass as  _steal,_  given that it belongs to the house of Odin in the first place.) He knows they have it, but their security is too thorough for him to be able to divine its location. Tony Stark could have hacked into their computer files and turned up this information in a matter of minutes; without him, Loki is left in the dark.

The conversation plays out depressingly as expected, with Fury repeating nearly verbatim the exact same empty posturing and narrow-minded furtiveness that he'd displayed the last time Loki had tried to give him this warning. Fury suspects Loki of another plot to try to steal the Tesseract, to flush it out of hiding and pounce on it once it's on the move (which, Loki admits, would not be a bad plan, if Fury had not already thought of it.)

Pushing past the bluster and mistrust, Loki gives Fury as much information about the nature of the thief and the circumstances of the theft as he possibly can without tipping his hand. When Fury demands to know the source of his warning Loki feigns to have received intelligence from Asgard (when truly, most of Asgard's intelligence fell off the bridge when he did.) At the end of the interview, Loki is ready to bite iron and spit nails from sheer aggravation, but at least he has gotten his message through. Norns willing, with three years of shining hero goodwill to his credit, Fury will actually consider it.

Two days pass. Then three. By the fourth day, still with no word, Loki has begin to entertain the - incredible - possibility that Fury has heeded his warning. That the Tesseract may still be safe, out of the hands of those who would use it to do ill, and that the Chitauri invasion will be foiled.

The thought leaves Loki feeling oddly unbalanced. Could it really be that simple, after all this time and effort? One phone call to the right person, at the right time, and an entire apocalypse is averted? The flap of a butterfly's wings is nothing to it. Has all his effort in forging the Avengers together been in vain?

But no, he knows it is not so. He had warned Fury before and the man had not listened. Without the credibility of the Avengers behind him, without his carefully crafted shell of lies and heroism, he could not have gotten Fury to take him seriously. It was not in vain, not all of it.

Yet what will this leave for him, now that the dreadful fate has been diverted? He has devoted nearly ten years of his life to this work, only to see it so suddenly and finally complete. He is not chained to Earth any more, nor to Asgard. He can walk free, make his own future. He could go... anywhere.

And yet... free to leave is free to stay, as well. It is true that he has put a great deal of effort into his cover identity as a member of the Avengers. He still finds the whole business of superheroism ridiculous, and vexing, but his shield-brothers are... less so. He could stay. He could continue as he has been, here in the Avengers Mansion, with Jan's outfits and Clint's jokes and Hank's cooking and Steve's ridiculous 'team bonding' exercises. He could, perhaps, even tell them the truth...

Perhaps.

* * *

In the dark of the early morning Loki's communicator device - the one Hank makes him carry, for those times when others wish to reach him - goes off, dragging Loki from a deep slumber. Battle instincts bring his body to full alertness within seconds, but his mind is a little slower - still a step behind as he rolls out of bed, staggers the few steps to the desk and turns the communicator on.

Fury's one-eyed visage meets him, his expression set and grim and cold, and Loki's heart sinks within his breast.

"How did you know?" is all Fury says, but just those four words tell Loki everything he didn't want to know.

A wave of blinding frustration crashes over him, so furious as to leave him breathless. He lets out a blue streak of curses, a snarl of invective that not even the All-Tongue can fully convert. "Blundering incompetents!" he hisses when his vision was cleared. "I told you, I  _warned_  you, was that not enough for you? Children at play with fire! You are not fit for the guardianship of such a vessel!"

For once Fury is silent, not returning Loki's barbed insults with any witty retorts. Viciously, Loki hopes he feels shame for his failure.  _He should._  But he forces himself to calm a bit, to get past the seething mess of anger and resentment and helplessness and  _think._  The Tesseract has been stolen, despite all his efforts to the contrary. Their only hope now is to turn back the invasion at its source.

But then, Loki always knew it might come to this. It is precisely this scenario that he has been preparing for with the Avengers, unbeknownst to them, for the last three years.

"This is worse than you think," Loki says, when he has control of his voice at last. "Prepare for war."

"War? With whom?" Fury demands.

"It doesn't matter who," Loki snaps. "Just do it. Muster whatever pitiful forces your planet can provide. Make them ready to travel to Antarctica."

"Look, Liesmith," Fury begins. "It's obvious you know more about this than you're letting on. What's your angle? Does Asgard have some kind of grief with these guys? Is this some kind of alien turf war that you're dragging back to Earth? Because I sure as hell don't appreciate - "

Loki cuts him off. "How soon you forget that you too are residents of this galaxy," he snarls. "You've been ignored for long enough, but your respite is now over. You  _chose_ to start playing around with forces beyond your ken. You wanted to be a big boy, now act like one.  _Prepare for war._ "

"I don't jump when you say so, Liesmith," Fury growls. A token show of resistance, but no less infuriating for it.

"If you had, we wouldn't be in this situation now," Loki snaps. "Just  _do_ it."

Fury signs off without another word.

* * *

Loki spends the rest of the night and morning in the training room, working off some of his emotions on the training drones there. They are all smoking piles of wreckage before he emerges, calmer now but no less deadly for it. Loki cares not for the destruction he leaves behind; one way or another, they won't be needing their training dummies again.

When he emerges in the living room he finds Hank and Jan there, seated close together on the couch; Steve is in the kitchenette, eating a croissant. Spider-Man he knows is still at his home, keeping up his pretense of a normal life, but there is no sign of... "Where is our Hawk?" Loki asks abruptly.

The Pyms look up at him in some surprise. Hank is the first to answer. "I haven't seen him since last night," he reports. Of course, Hank was likely still awake at that fateful hour, working magic in his laboratory; Clint often stayed to keep him company. "He got a new message, went white as a sheet, and locked himself in his room. He hasn't come out since."

Loki curses. No doubt the news Fury passed on to him last night was given to Clint as well - possibly even before him.

"And you got a message too," Jan says. Of course, the late-night call to his communicator would have been logged. She looks at him earnestly. "What's going on, Loki?"

Loki hesitates for a moment; years of silence have left a habit on him that is hard to break. Steve weighs in, his blue eyes earnest and his face serious. "If it's something that's affecting the team, we need to know," he says.

Reluctantly, Loki nods. "You're right. This is going to involve all of us, very soon," he says. He looks around at all of their faces, then chooses his words carefully. "An... artifact was stolen from SHIELD custody last night. We'll need to deal with the thief. Get ready for travel to Antarctica."

 _"Antarctica?"_  Jan yelps.

"You've got to be kidding!" Hank sputters. "Our uniforms aren't anywhere near suited for that climate; we'll need specialized gear!"

Would they? Loki had not considered how much more affected mortals would be by the extreme temperatures of the frozen wastes. "Prepare for that, then," he says. "We must make ready within a week."

Steve looks at him with shrewd calculation. "You're not telling us the full story, are you?" he says.

"No." Loki sighs. "I will. But I only wish to tell it once. Get Spider-Man here, and Hawk, and I shall tell you everything." Or at least, as complete a cover story as he can fabricate before then.

"Will you talk to Clint?" Jan asks him, her eyes round and serious. "He seemed upset."

Loki blinks. "I? Why should I, especially?"

"Because you're his best friend!" Jan says. "Whatever has upset him so much, I'm certain that you will be more help to him than anyone."

He is? Loki had never stopped to consider them in that light. The archer is his best lieutenant, of course, his strong right arm. They fight well together, and he enjoys the man's company, for his shrewd observation and quick wit. Does that make them best friends?

It's been so long since he had a friend of his own - a  _true_  friend, not one borrowed from a brother or a lover - that Loki can no longer be certain of what it's like.

"I... will speak with him," Loki says, when he becomes aware that he has been silent for too long.

Steve nods. "We'll start making arrangements for the trip, then," he says. "When you're ready, tell us what we need to know. We'll draw up a battle plan based on that information."

Loki mounts the stairs to Clint's wing of the mansion, and marvels as he does at how much faith his teammates place in him.

* * *

Clint's door is locked, not only the flimsy lock in the doorknob but also the heavy deadbolt on the other side. It's a lock that can't be overridden by Hank Pym's electronic overrides of every room of the house, but Loki opens it with a wave of his hand and pushes the door cautiously open, peering inwards. The interior is dim, all the blinds drawn.

"Hawk?" Loki asks cautiously. He's not sure quite what he expected; Fury had almost certainly given him the same news he'd given to Loki, so he'd thought perhaps Clint would be in here preparing for battle. Instead, Clint has retreated to the furthest corner of the room, the far end of his bunk bed. He has the room to himself; there's enough space in Avengers Mansion for all of them. Yet he still requested a bunk bed, claiming to sleep better off the ground.

The shadows shift, and Loki's sharp eyes catch movement in the dimness, the pale flash of a bare arm against dark leather. Clint is sitting with his knees up to his chest, arms wrapped around them. It is a posture of profound distress, and Loki is less sure than ever what he should do.

"Hey," Clint's voice comes out of the shadows, rough. "Fury talked to you?"

"I talked to him," Loki responds. At least Clint hasn't tried to throw him out of his bedroom for trespassing on his - grief, Loki suspects. "The Tesseract has been stolen. Dr. Selvig is dead." Fury hadn't actually said so, but Loki can infer.

"Yeah," Clint says.

"Did you know him well?" Loki asks.

A shrug. "Not really," Clint says. "He was a nice guy, a decent guy, a good scientist. He knew his stuff. He didn't deserve what happened to him."

There's regret there, regret for the death of a good man, but that is not the source of his pain. "Who was it, then?" Loki asks.

There's a long, long moment of silence between them, and then he hears Clint exhale. "Tasha," he says, on the end of a sigh.

 _Tasha._  It's not a name Loki knows. But it's a woman's name, he knows that much. A lover's name? "Who was she?"

"Natasha Romanov." Clint shifts around, easing a little bit from his wound-up-tight posture. "I'm not sure how to explain Tasha, honestly I'm not. Although... you're not American, so that helps a lot. And you weren't on Earth for the Cold War, were you?"

"Mm, I don't believe so," Loki says. "When the Aesir say  _cold war,_  they usually mean the campaign on Jotunheimr, the ice world. Which was rather before my time, for all it lasted nearly two centuries."

"Yeah... well... our cold war wasn't quite that long," Clint said. "It was us - the US - against Russia. There was never any shooting - that was what made it  _cold_  - but there were plenty of spies, sabotage, assassination... All my kind of work, really."

"And this Romanov woman was also a spy?" Loki asks. She sounds like Loki's type of mortal; much like Clint is, really.

"She was the best," Clint said quietly. "She was their secret weapon for years, until the program fell apart and she went mercenary. She was a pain in SHIELD's ass for years, until I managed to get her cornered - pure luck, really - and I... I wanted to give her a chance. She wanted to take the chance. So she came in."

Such simple words, so stark and unornamented; yet Loki can read more into the spaces between them than any flowery poetry could fill. Two wounded warriors, more alike in method than they were apart in ideology - alone and lonely, seeking a friendly heart in the cold dark of the world. He couldn't be sure, and wouldn't ask, whether they had been lovers as well as comrades - but in the end, whether they were or weren't didn't change how deep a hole her loss left in Clint's heart. It doesn't change anything at all.

Clint lets out a rusty chuckle, dragging the heel of his hand across his forehead. "The hell of it is," he says. "The hell of it is, this wasn't even her normal beat. She usually did infiltration, information extraction or maybe a little wetwork.

"But they needed to move Selvig and his project, they got a tip, needed to hide them somewhere for a while. They needed someone with the top clearances and the expertise in disappearing, and she was it. If I'd have been there, they probably would have tapped me instead." A deep, ragged breath. "I wish I was. I wish they had."

Loki frowns. "But then you would be dead in her place," he points out.

"Yeah," Clint says.

Loki doesn't understand that - he can't understand that. How would it be better for Clint to have died instead of this woman Loki's never even known? Selvig would still be dead, the Tesseract still stolen. Doesn't Clint realize that he has been spared a grisly fate by no less than a miracle?

Loki is not good at this, speaking words of comfort. The Aesir view death very differently from mortals, for many reasons, but this woman, she was a warrior, like Clint. Some things are universal. "She died doing her duty, protecting the innocent," Loki offers finally. "That is a warrior's death. A good death."

Clint lets out an ugly snarl. "They found her body in a dumpster with her  _skin ripped off._  Excuse me if I don't think there's anything _good_  about that!"

Loki looks away, saying nothing. There is nothing to say. He knows how the Chitauri steal the shapes of others, he knows this. Would it be easier not to know?

"I'm sorry," Clint says a moment later, letting out a shaky breath. "I shouldn't take it out on you. I know it wasn't your fault."

_But it was._

He'd tried to do good - he thought he was doing a good deed, by taking Clint out of the path of harm. It had never occurred to him to think that some other mortal, some other SHIELD agent would simply be put in his place. The thought leaves him feeling deeply unbalanced, uneasy, and strangely guilty. If he had never come to Earth, this woman - this Romanov - would not have died today.

_She'd just die tomorrow, instead. Why do you feel guilty for a woman you didn't even kill?_

Clint inhales a deep breath, lets it out slowly, a tremor to the sound however steady he tries to keep it. "I know it's stupid to cry," he says, voice thick with tears and wry self-deprecation. "Me, a grown-ass man. But... Tasha did some bad things in her past. A lot of bad things. But she turned herself around, she tried to do better. She was trying to do what was right.

"Other people, they didn't like her, or they didn't trust her because she'd lie and manipulate people. But that was just what she did, it was what she was trained for. It was what she was good at and she knew how to use it. She was trying to use it for good. But in the end she was all alone."

Clint looks up at Loki, his eyes wet and shining. "It terrifies me to think that if I don't cry for her, then nobody will."

Loki says nothing, still as stone. Clint heaves a deep breath, drags his hand across his eyes, and lets out a watery chuckle. "I'm sorry, I'm probably not making much sense."

"More than you know," Loki whispers.

For the first time since he entered the dark room, Loki reaches out, lays his hand on Clint's chest. "You have heart, Hawk," Loki says softly. "It makes you strong, but do not let it pain you so."

He pauses before the next word, swallows thickly against jealousy before he can manage to say, "Natasha Romanov was lucky to have a friend like you."

 

* * *

 

Three years and there has been no word from Asgard, none. Unlike the last time, where the All-Father sent his ravens to the humans with a warning within hours of Loki's disappearance from Asgard, there has been neither hide nor hair nor feather of any messenger.

At first Loki was grateful for this oversight; his primary worry in the first few days was that Odin would send his ravens to expose the lie of Loki's carefully crafted story to Fury. As the weeks slipped by without any interference from his one-time father, Loki began to relax, slipping into his new role and not bothering overmuch about Asgard.

But it has been three years, and there has been no message. Not to the humans, and not to him.

Only silence.

Why not? As far as the Odin of this timeline knows, the last thing he saw of his second son was him falling to his death in the Abyss. Surely the fact that he survived is at least worth taking note of. Is Loki deserving of attention only when he is menacing the pitiful mortals, rather than aiding them? Is Loki, when he is not waging war on his brother's pets, simply not worth the bother? He had not started his campaign with the intention of winning over Odin's approval or forgiveness, but from this vantage of three years he can admit that it would have been nice.

If not approval, then at least  _acknowledgement_. Surely Odin must notice that he has been preparing for war, for an engagement far beyond the scale of the mortals' usual petty squabbling. The Bifrost is broken, but Heimdall's eyes are not; and Loki could scarce have made himself more visible if he painted himself in woad and did a sword dance under a full spotlight. They must see him, they must see his preparations. They must know that he gathers his strength in anticipation of some greater movement among the Realm.

But perhaps that is unfair, Loki reluctantly concludes. Odin -  _this_  Odin, in  _this_  timeline - has never received an actual warning about what is coming. Loki cannot expect anyone on Asgard to be able to read minds (or at the very least, not  _his_  mind, which he has spent centuries fortifying against psychic assault for just that reason.) It's not fair to expect appropriate action from Asgard if they do not have appropriate information.

It is near dawn; the world outside is beginning to lighten in anticipation of the sun. All his comrades are still sleeping, exhausted by the events of the day. Loki leaves the shelter of the mansion and walks out onto the grounds, his boots leaving dark paths in the dew-soaked grass.

"Heimdall," Loki says, not raising his voice to more than conversational volume. Nor does he lift his head up to address his words to the sky; he knows Heimdall will hear him nevertheless. "Gatekeeper, I know that my words can reach you, even if the gate remains closed. I beg of you to convey them to King Odin, and let him judge as he will.

"Much has passed between us since last we stood face to face in Asgard. The bounds of fealty and kinship have, perhaps, been strained past the point of breaking. What I ask now, I do not ask out of trust or affection, but out of most practical need. Not my own, All-Father, but for the good of the Realms.

"A shadow looms on the horizon which threatens to break over Midgard and pour from there into every realm. I cannot tell you how I have come to know of this shadow - not yet - but it is real, and it is final. They will leave nothing in their wake. They must be turned back at the breach, or not at all. It is for this purpose I have brought this band of heroes together."

Loki begins to pace, restless agitation building up in him too much to keep still. "If you cannot put faith in my words, will you not at least take weight of my actions? All my efforts, the years of my labor that I have poured into girding Midgard for this threat - into building a defense for Midgard against attack. They are stalwart warriors, for mortals. But the danger draws near, and I fear - I fear that that they will not be enough. They need the hand of Asgard's finest held in protection above them, they need the mighty sinews of our greatest warriors. They need the elemental power of Mjolnir to smite their foes. They need the God of Thunder.

"I plead before you, All-Father, to send aid to the support of Midgard in her dire hour. They need an army. If you cannot send an army, then send one man. Send Thor."

His appeal delivered, Loki pauses in his pacing, his face lifted expectantly to the sky. It is foolish, he knows; he cannot expect any answer, any response, so soon. Heimdall has not even carried his words to Odin yet - if Heimdall will even convey his words at all. If Odin has not ordered a ban on any speech of his wayward son. If Odin still rules in Asgard, if anyone is up there, at all.

This must be what mortals feel like, Loki thinks, when they direct their prayers to the heavens towards a God whom they have never even seen. Not knowing if their pleas will be answered, or even heard.

Loki finds he is ill suited to such uncertainty.

But he retires to his room and he waits, and he waits, ears half-open for the sound of flapping wings or cawing beaks. It will take Odin at least a day and a night, Loki estimates, to gather enough dark energy to send Thor through. Even assuming he starts right away, which he might not. He must be patient.

But he waits all that day, and the next day, and the next.

Thor never does come.

 

* * *

 

A week later, the Avengers are making landfall on Antarctica.

Loki did not much care for the frozen continent the last time he was here, and it does not improve with repetition. The entire landmass is barren, dead rock buried under miles of dirty ice. It reminds him too much of Jotunheim, except at least Jotunheim still showed signs of life. This place brings only death.

Fury and SHIELD provided transportation - not the Helicarrier but a boat, swift and well-stocked for the expedition. Hank and Jan have between them managed to produce cold-weather gear versions of all their uniforms; it will protect them from the worst of the continent's ravages while still allowing them enough freedom of movement to fight.

They are fortunate for both of these boons, for even after arriving at their destination, Loki is not entirely sure where they should go. He's been here once before, during the initial invasion - but then, he had other things on his mind. Then, the Chitauri's beachhead had been an unmistakable, ugly scar on the landscape; without that, there are few landmarks to orient him. Antarctica is huge, featureless and trackless, and Loki is not entirely sure where the portal will open - or even precisely when.

They're already several days late from the original invasion date, presumably because Fury's shell-game with the Tesseract caused them delay; but Loki can deduce that there is a set amount of time that must pass in preparation between the theft and the opening of the portal, and he knows that the latter must come soon.

At last he gets a faint reading from the Tesseract - the thief can no longer keep it hidden belowground, or in wave-shielded caves, and Loki can feel its presence at last. But the signal is a weak, erratic thing - Loki can only get a sense of its direction, not a fix on its location or distance. He suspects that it is moving, as it never seems to come from exactly the same place twice, and he cannot triangulate its position no matter how fast he and the Avengers move over the frozen ground.

The other Avengers follow him, loyal and obedient... so far. But Loki can see the sidelong glances they shoot at him at times, the dubious whispered conferences they hold with each other when they think they are out of the range of his hearing. Loki does not bother to argue with them any further, or give any more fine speeches. Time will prove him right, or wrong, soon enough.

"How can you be so sure of when it's going to happen?" Steve asks at last, too honest to sneak whispers as the others do. "I mean, I guess it's possible what you're saying, that there  _is_  some race of alien beings out there that could come to Earth some day. How do you know that it  _will_  and why are you so sure of  _when?"_

He is not so foolish as to tell them the truth of how he knows. He has learned that lesson well. "A prophecy," he says instead, reverting to a more simplistic truth. "Long written by the seers of Asgard."

Jan Pym snorts in an unladylike fashion, huddling in her fur-lined parka against the stinging icy wind. "Well, here on Earth, we don't really believe in prophecies," she tells him. "The future's not decided yet. Anything could happen, and we won't know until it does."

For just a moment, Loki  _hates_  them as passionately as he envies them for their ignorance. For their innocence.

But before he can muster the patience, or they the breath, to argue the matter further, there is a deep rumbling sound that shivers the snow around them. Loki whips his head around to stare into the sky in the distance - not  _quite_  in the direction they'd been heading - to see a seething mass of blue lightning arcing through the otherwise clear sky. It catches, steadies and spins smoothly into a hypnotic loop, a perfect ring cut out of the sky that leads to  _elsewhere._

The portal.

For a moment they are all transfixed, rooted in place as they watch a hole torn in space; Loki sees varying expressions of fear, awe and wonder on their faces. He is reminded once more of how young and inexperienced the peoples of Midgard are; the other Realms are long since accustomed to intrusions from beyond the borders of their world, and know well that it rarely heralds anything good.

"They come," Loki growls, snapping them out of their entrancement. They look at him now, and there is a new respect in their eyes, a shadow of what they saw while looking at the portal to another world: amazement and just the slightest touch of fear.

"Loki, what should we do?" Spider-Man asks him, just a touch plaintively.

"We must stem the flow at its source," Loki says grimly. "We must stop them as they come through, until we can get close enough to shut down the portal. Left unchecked, they will spread out over the surface and burrow down, bring in materials to build fortifications and facilities." He remembers the jagged tower, the looming walls; the deep blood-filled trenches dug in precise array. "Above all, we  _must not_  allow them to entrench themselves."

"We'll stop them before they get that far," Steve says, full of confidence as he ever is. "And hey, I've busted a few bunkers in my day. "

A voice crackles in Loki's ear, over the communicators they all wear that links them back to the Helicarrier. "We see them too," Fury says, his voice grim. "Avengers, I have troops ready to advance on your position."

"No!" Loki snaps, loud enough to make the device squeal in protest. "Keep them back. Ordinary soldiers will be useless against this foe. Send your drones if you must, but send nothing that you would care to see bleed." Human blood is what they came for, Loki knows; they need it to perform their dark summoning. Loki means to deny them.

"Leave it to us, Director. These bugs won't stand a chance." Steve lowers his cowl over his face, the reinforced material protecting his head as the built-in goggles shield his eyes from the wind and glare, and becomes Captain America. "Avengers, assemble!"

And then the battle is joined.

The portal is several meters across by the time they reach it, the edges slowly peeling back to reveal the rift beyond it. Beneath it a bright arc of energy leads down to a dark point in the snow, surrounded by a faint shimmer, that must be the Tesseract. They must reach it, must find a way to break the connection as soon as possible.

But the first scouts are already coming through, chitin-armored figures crouched on sleek metal fliers. Each one bears three Chitauri; one to pilot the flyer, another to operate a mounted turret, and the third to drop to the ground and charge into battle. There are a dozen already, falling into defensive formation about the portal and the Tesseract, and more come through every second.

The Avengers fall into battle naturally, their tactics sure and practiced. Goliath strides forward, growing as he does in size until he can swat the fliers from the sky with his hands. Jan becomes a golden blur, shrinking as her wings appear and she zooms upwards; she quickly disappears from sight, but her passage is marked by the bright flashes of arcing electricity that are her stingers. At her size the Wasp can crawl right up into the machinery of a flyer, tear out wires and short the rest, sending the machine tumbling to ruin on the icy waste below.

Hawkeye and Spider-Man have found themselves an exposed rocky outcropping; Hawkeye climbs to the top of it and perches there, picking off the pilots of the flyers as they pass by or shooting grappling arrows that wrap around the delicate fins and yank them out of the air. Spider-Man plants himself on a rock face and snags passing flyers with his webbing, swinging them on the end of the long arc to use their own momentum to crash them onto the ground. Once grounded, they are easy prey.

Loki and Captain America are the only two members of the team that cannot fly (well, Loki can, but he cannot fly and fight at the same time) so they remain to cover the ground. Captain America's bright coloring makes him a distinctive, easy target, and the Chitauri crowd themselves to shoot at him or mob him to the ground; he fends them all off, using his shield to deflect the bolts while his superior strength flings the aliens like ragdolls to the side. Loki slips like a shadow in and out of the melee, sending doubles of himself to distract and confuse while he teleports quickly from place to place, slipping up behind one Chitauri soldier and another and driving a knife into their spine.

The Avengers fight with practice, but too gently; they have spent too long fighting only humans. Loki turns away with his blade still steaming with blood to find Spider-Man pinning an enemy Chitauri to a rock face, binding him with a cocoon that will leave him helpless but unharmed. "What are you doing?" Loki snarls over the communicator. "This is no time for mercy! Kill them!"

Spider-Man looks up at him, eyes wide. "But -" he begins.

"Every enemy you leave alive is one that will rise up to face us again later," Loki says, cutting him off. Several of the others have broken off to stare at them, at Loki with his hands dripping with blood. "There is no margin for error here. This is your very planet you are fighting for! Now fight!"

"Don't need to tell me twice," Hawkeye mutters grimly. "After what these sons of bitches did to Tasha."

"They're right," Captain America confirms, his voice stern. "There's no time for second-guessing in combat. Give them all you've got."

Shakily the Avengers resume the battle, and it is not without hesitation that they change their preferred tactics for more lethal ones. Goliath crushes enemies under his hands instead of only stunning them; the Wasp's electric blasts grow more brutal. When the clip of his own weapon runs dry Steve snatches up one of the energy staffs from a fallen enemy, and it does not take him long to learn to use it. Slowly the battlefield fills with the smell of blood and offal, the burnt ozone smell of lightning and charred flesh. To Loki, it is strangely nostalgic.

It is well that they do. The rift is wider now, the Chitauri coming through in the dozens at a time. Despite all their efforts, they are slowly being pushed back, further away from the portal and its power source. The air is thick with buzzing flyers, the ground swarms with Chitauri drones. It is no longer enough to kill them one at a time, it is taking too long. They need to be more efficient.

Loki is a powerful, able fighter, both in close quarters and at range with his knives, and he knows many useful spells. Yet his magic stems from within himself, and as such is fundamentally limited; he cannot simply hurl around bolts of fire or electricity, not without an enchanted weapon such as Gungnir or Mjolnir made for that very purpose. He can slow and distract, inconvenience or confuse; he can cast doubles of himself to confuse the enemy, or veil their eyes with darkness, or transmute their weapons into chalk, or jam the engines of their flyers, or stick their feet to the edge of their flyer so that they tumble off-balance when they try to leap off. Yet without an external power source he has only his own life-force to draw on, and as powerful a sorcerer as he is even that has limits. If he drains himself down to his own core, there will be nothing left.

Steve is right, this is no time to hold back. Loki reaches into his interdimensional pocket and draws out the last of his trump cards, the Casket of Ancient Winters.

He opens it with a howling blast of cold, and an entire phalanx of charging Chitauri soldiers freezes in its tracks. Steve's shield was already winging its way towards them before Loki moved, and when the metal disc rebounds off the first statue it shatters like glass. Captain America turns towards him as his shield returns to his hand, a startled cry on his lips. "Loki? What's happening to you?" he exclaims.

Loki does not need to look at his hands to see the color creeping up his skin; he can see it when he shatters another statue with a single blow, then another. But there is no time in this battle for squeamishness. "I am fine. It is a thing of magic; do not worry about me." He shoots a lance of ice in Cap's direction that deflects off the convex shield, splitting precisely into two bolts and felling the enemies that are attempting to creep up on him. "Get that portal closed!"

Loki lets out another blast, clearing the way to the portal as far as he can, and then he must throw up a shield of shivering ice to block the incoming blasts of fire. "Go!" he shouts at the others, and thankfully, they move.

It takes all Loki's concentration to survive in the next few minutes, with the attention of the invaders focused upon him. All to the better; if he can keep their aggression on himself, his teammates will have a chance to get through.

"I can't hit it!" Hawkeye's voice exclaims in his ear, the archer's frustration clear. "It's protected by some kind of force-field. All my arrows are bouncing off."

"Let me try," Jan says breathlessly over the comm. "I'm smallest - maybe I can get through -" The next thing to come over the comms is a buzzing screech, and then a female cry of pain.

"Jan!" Hank exclaims, turning towards her.

"I'm fine!," she snaps, breathy with pain but unwavering. "Stay focused. We have to find a way to get through it."

"There's no entrance or seam that I can find," Steve says. "We need Loki over here - maybe he can teleport past the shield..."

"I am somewhat occupied at the moment," Loki says with a snarl, as two Chitauri leap at him from behind, wrapping their clinging limbs around him and trying to drag him down. He freezes them with his Jotun skin, jerking his arms angrily to shatter them into glass shards around him.

The Casket of Ancient Winters is a powerful weapon, the most powerful they have, yet Loki is coming to realize that these conditions are not the best for it. The Casket is a weapon like the creatures that built it; savage and elemental, short-ranged and brutal. It is not a tool of finesse or flexibility. The Chitauri themselves do not fear the cold; they are adapted to the empty coldness of space, and low temperatures alone will not kill them. Even when frozen by the Casket's power, it takes a brutal blow to finish them, or else they will only thaw again.

With some difficulty Loki can use the Casket to fire missiles of ice, long jagged blue spears that rip and impale, yet he can only target one enemy at a time like that. He can blast out a cone of intense cold which engulfs everything in its path, yet the range is short; there are far too many Chitauri already spread out much too far for him to get them all. And he must take care not to open the Casket too far, because to do so would slay his allies sooner than it would kill the enemy. He is killing them as fast as he can, yet it is not fast enough.

They have been fighting for hours, and already the Avengers are beginning to flag. The cold and icy winds are brutal on them; the heat of battle warms them, yet the sweat-soaked garments invite an icy chill that creeps and debilitates them. And there is no relief in sight. The portal inches further open with every second; already it gapes half a mile wide, and Chitauri warriors pour through it like an endless swarm of locusts. But the Chitauri are not mindless beasts; they share a purpose, moving in formations and coordinating their actions. And they are learning. Already the flyers know to give Goliath a wide berth, to fly above the range of Spider-Man's webbing, to duck and jag to avoid Hawkeye's incoming arrows. There are more of them than the Avengers can possibly engage, and too many of them peel off from the melee to stream away, to wreak some new mayhem beyond their reach.

Somewhere, off to the distant side, Loki sees a dark streak in the sky and hears the distant roar of a jet; the X-men have arrived, perhaps, or the Fantastic Four. Loki sent warnings to both, yet they did not heed them in time; they are late, and can only fight at the fringes while the main battle rages around the Avengers, cut off from reinforcements or aid.

"Guys," Hawkeye says over the comm; his voice is breathless and weary. "I'm almost out of ammo, here."

This has always been the biggest weakness of Hawkeye's style, and they all know it; he is not meant for such grinding, relentless combat. It is the reason archers are not favored among the warriors of Loki's people; the Aesir are immortals, and tend to fight with other immortals. Their battles tend to last for weeks, and unless they have a limitless supply of magical ammunition (such as Loki does) their ammunition will inevitably be exhausted.

"Get to lower ground, and pick up one of the enemy's weapons," Steve orders him. "I'll cover you while you figure out how to use it, it's pretty straightforward."

"Roger that," Hawkeye answers, and slings his bow over his chest with a practiced movement, turning to scramble down the stone outcrop.

Right at that moment - perhaps inspired by the sight of Hawkeye lowering his bow - one of the flyers swoops over his position, knocking Hawkeye off the lip of the stone and sweeping him along with them. Spider-Man scrambles over the ridge and fires a shot of webbing after them, trying to drag them back or at least hitch a ride; a few strands of webbing catch the very trailing edge of the flyer, but they are thin and brittle in the freezing air and shatter as soon as the flyer's engine roars.

"Hawkeye is taken!" Captain America crackles over the communicator. "Wasp, get in the air and get after him. Goliath, try to follow and rescue him ASAP. Loki -"

Each of the Avengers has, secretly woven into their uniforms, a number of Loki's runes. Some of them are for protection, turning flexible cloth into armor that will turn arrows and bullets, absorb energy blasts. Some of them are for stamina, and some for healing, at least as much as such minor magics can provide. But one of them is the same as the one he placed on Tony Stark's armor so long ago; runes that lead from their hearts to Loki's, six little candle-flames of warmth.

By the time Steve has finished giving orders, six has become five.

It seems the Chitauri do not need their blood sacrifices alive, only fresh.

"Hold, Avengers," Loki manages to force out. "Hold your positions. Closing the portals is... must be our first priority." He manages to fashion a lie, one that slips over his tongue more easily than the truth. "Once it's closed, the Chitauri will be trapped on this side. Hawkeye will be a valuable hostage to them then. We can retrieve him safely after the battle."

"We can't just leave him in the hands of those monsters!" Spider-Man exclaims.

"No, do as Loki says," Captain America orders reluctantly. "He's right, the portal is our first priority. Hawkeye's a fighter, he's tough. He can take care of himself until we get there."

Loki cuts his outgoing voice so that there is no chance of the others overhearing him, and for a moment he is overwhelmed by the grief. His Hawk. His best lieutenant, his strong right arm. His best friend. Their band has already lost a brother, and the others don't even know.

Enough of this.

Loki explodes into motion, turning the Casket to blast out a wave of ice at knee level, locking the advancing Chitauri drones into place. They screech in frustration, struggling to move their legs, and Loki ignores them as he darts between shadow and shadow, barely pausing to rip his knives through the necks of those he passes. He summons a swirl of ice and snow around him, diguising his movements and sending out a double to throw enemies off his track, and makes for the center of the maelstrom, the Tesseract.

A hulking cadre of guards surrounds it, but Loki tears viciously through them and skids to a halt before the barrier, breathing heavily. The wormhole machine is a twisted metal construct, dark and bulky, but at the center of it lies a violent glitter; a delicate metal casing that ingulfs a violent blue blaze.

It is the first time Loki has laid eyes on the Tesseract, after nearly ten years of chasing after it. He'd heard descriptions of it, of course, from old inventories of the Great Treasures of Asgard; but no dry description or clumsy chicken-scratch illustration could possibly capture the violent skelter of energy and potential twisted and bound into so tiny in space. Whole galaxies of light are crystallized inside its heart, shifting and fractal. He has seen echoes of it in the dark paths, in Yggdrasil's twisting boughs... and in the segmented body of Nithhogg himself.

It is... beautiful.

But this is no time to be mesmerized by the glorious cacophony pouring off the thing. He must shut down the machine, stop the sucking siphon that pours upwards to the portal above. And first he must get past the shield.

His hand makes no impression on the crackling force-field, nor do his knives. Even with all his strength behind it it does not even shift, nor is there any sign of give beneath it when he sends his magic into the ground below to undermine it. It is as unmovable as a stone pillar that extends to the core of the planet. Remembering Steve's suggestion from earlier, Loki tries to teleport inside, but that too fails.

With shaking hands, aware of each moment slipping through his fingers, Loki works a spell of kenning - a spell to seek the nature of what lies before him, that he might sense its weak points. What he finds in return makes him snarl in frustration; the Tesseract has been made to defend itself. It has tilted itself and this block of space surrounding it to a slight angle in this spatial plane; no thing of a mere three dimensions can pass into it. Effectively no longer fully exists in their reality; they can see it, but it might as well be on the far side of the moon for all they can reach it.

To get around that barrier, he needs something akin to the Tesseract itself, something that can move along the same paths. He tries to draw on the Casket to aid him, but it is futile; the Casket is an artifact of  _this_  world, the forces and elements and laws that move it, base and elementary. The Tesseract is something higher.

As he is searching his mind for some new way to attack the problem, shouts of alarm pull him out of his trance. A shadow falls over him, blocking out the sun, and he cranes his neck back stupidly to watch a wave of darkness pass overhead. Ah, he thinks inanely. So the portal has become wide enough for the leviathans to arrive.

"Avengers, we have a new threat," Steve's voice crackles tensely over the comm. "Taking this beast down is our top priority." The obviousness of it makes Loki want to snort, despite the imminent danger;  _no kidding?_

The leviathan makes a beeline for Goliath, who braces his huge feet in the ice to meet it head-on. The beast strikes him in the chest with a screech that sounds like a massive kettle boiling, spikes undulating from each side as it bares a mouth lined with meters-long fangs.

For a moment Hank wrestles with it, growing even larger as his size-changing power struggles to its very limits. Then the leviathan twists and throws him sideways with an earth-shattering crash, whipping its long spiked tail around to send him sprawling with a vicious blow. Goliath stumbles to catch himself, struggles to find footing among the blood-slick ice, and the great beast darts forward with another slashing bite.

Then Loki is there, the Casket in his hands as he runs, filling in a path of frost and ice to carry him up to the leviathan's level. A lance of ice stabs upwards from the ground, piercing the leviathan's belly, and it roars again as it struggles free of the protrusion, turning away from the downed giant to face him instead.

Loki balances at the top of his self-made precipice of ice, waiting calmly as the leviathan rushes at him. Each of its teeth are taller than him, and if it pins him between its body and the ice he will be nothing more than a smear. Still he holds his ground, watching the enraged beast rush upon him with a steady gaze.

At the last moment before it hits him the leviathan opens its gaping maw, and Loki's hands snap up, the Casket between them. He unleashes the fury of a thousand winters into the beast's mouth, an ocean's worth of ice, an endless depth of cold. The leviathan's mouth starts to close, then locks in place as the great block of ice between its jaws prevents it. Its teeth scrape and dig themselves deeply into the ice, but can't close it, and the leviathan is pinned as a fish on a hook as the angry fist of winter blasts down its throat.

Loki feels the beast's howl more than he hears it, shuddering vibrations that travel up the path of ice to his hand. The leviathan's great body thrashes and convulses in an attempt to free itself from the deadly bait, but to no avail; Loki keeps the Casket open, focused, and the ice continues to spread through the leviathan's innards. The beast's soft innards are no match for the ice's razored edges, and even the monstrous chitin of its skeletons cannot resist the grinding pressure of expanding ice for long.

When at last the Leviathan falls to the ground, it resembles little so much as a hedgehog. ichor drips from coated spears of ice that have burst through its hide from the inside. The beast continues to thrash and twitch, the body not yet realizing that it is already dead. At last, Loki has a chance to look around him, to locate his shield-brothers.

He has slain the beast, but took too long. The battlefield is a shambles, the Avengers pushed back ever farther from their goal, each one besieged by enemies. The Chitauri have turned their attention to Goliath, and for all that he is twenty times their size, the numbers they are throwing at him are too much even for his colossal strength. Still dazed from the leviathan's blows earlier, Goliath staggers to the side as a sheer wave of bodies overwhelms him. A raft of flyers circle him from just out of his reach, concentrating their energy weapons on his head and neck, while an ocean of drones surge about his feet, pulling him down to the ground.

"Goliath is in trouble," Loki says urgently over the comm. "Fall back on him,  _now_. " He suits actions to words, throwing himself into the melee and slaughtering all within reach - but for each one that falls, two more take its place, shoving him back. He calls on his magic, attempting to throw shields and force-fields around Goliath, but the sheer force of the assault burns through each of them in seconds.  ** _" Now! "_**

Out of the corner of his eye he sees a golden meteor approaching, the Wasp descending like a Valkyrie to her husband's side. It's already too late. The two largest flyers, humming platforms that carry a dozen Chitauri each aboard, have strung steel cables between them; while drones attack his hands and arms, keeping them weighed down and defenseless, the two flyers circle Goliath in a pattern that wraps a metal noose about his neck. Their aircraft claws at the air, engines whining, and for a moment it looks as though they might even lift him from his feet.

Another candleflame above Loki's heart stutters out.

"Hank!" Jan's voice tears across the communicator, and the sheer animal pain in her scream crushes Loki's heart like a fist. Goliath's body shudders, sways - and then falls.

The impact of his body shakes the ground.

When it clears Loki finds himself on his hands and knees, bent and blinking in the scuffed and bloodied snow. The Casket lies a few feet away, its glow muted from all the power that has been drained from it. Around him the Chitauri flow freely, their flyers blasting through the air and speeders skidding past him unimpeded. They don't even slow down for him any more.

And why should they? Goliath was their strength, their one great weapon aside from the Casket. With him down, they don't have the muscle left to pull this off _._ For all that these mortal heroes have courage, they have coordination and virtue and loyalty, they lack in  _power._  They needed the unbounded strength of the berserker. They needed force _,_  real and elemental. They needed  _Thor._

They need Thor, and he never came.

"Avengers, what's your status?" It's Fury's voice, gruff and tinny over the comm - it must have gotten knocked askew somehow.

"Three down, Sir," Steve's voice comes shakily. Three? Loki realizes with a sort of distant surprise that he cannot hear or see Spider-Man anywhere, and the boy's rune has gone dark on his chest. He didn't even notice. "Two more are not - looking good. No - no progress on disabling the portal."

Fury makes a distant, unhappy grunt. "The army is moving in now," he says.

That lights a spark in Loki, drives him to snatch up the microphone and fit the headset back into place. "Do  _not_  let them attack!" he hisses into the microphone. "Did you hear nothing I said? Have you  _learned_  nothing? That is exactly what they want! Your soldiers are no match for this foe. You are sending them all to their deaths, and our enemy will drain their blood for fuel!"

"Loki..." Perhaps Fury thinks he's being poetic; he's not. He's deadly serious. The six of them will not provide enough blood for the ritual, not even Goliath; but an army of hapless soldiers, being driven to their death,  _will_. "It's not my call. These are the first response forces of half a dozen nations. I can't stop them."

Loki swears, then tears the microphone off his head entirely. He stands panting in the snow, his hands clenching and unclenching around the electronics crushed in his hand. Dark shadows fall over them again; another leviathan passes through the portal and knifes away through the air, then another in the opposite direction. New Chitauri drones stream over the battlefield, ignoring them as though they aren't even there; already, the first dark stones that make up the foundations of the tower are in place.

Steve is the only one still fighting; surrounded by a ring of Chitauri soldiers, closing in on him as he swings his weapon and shield in hopeless defiance. He calls out for assistance, support; doesn't the fool know that it's hopeless? They fought with all they had, Loki gave them every advantage he could think of, and it still wasn't enough. They lost. They failed;  _he_  failed them. This is the end.

_It doesn't have to be._

Loki jerks into motion, one foot stumbling in front of another. "Loki, where are you going?" Steve's voice crackles in his ear. "Help me! Please!"

Loki yanks the headset from his head, crushes it under his heel, and doesn't turn back. "Loki!" He doesn't need the headset to hear this one; he can hear Steve's voice rising from behind him, full of betrayal and fury.  _"Loki, you coward!"_

The word hits his back like a blow, and something inside Loki breaks; snaps like a twig and crumbles. He stumbles a step but doesn't stop, doesn't turn around. The mortal knows  _nothing._ Doesn't Steve realize that he is the  _only_  chance they have left to save the world from Nithhogg's gaping maw? What is to be gained by standing his ground in fruitless courage when not one life will be bought by their sacrifice, when no one will be left behind to remember it?

There is a rift not too far from here; he can sense it, an opening into the Void. He can go there, fall into the void, turn time back to its beginning. He can start again, leave this all behind -

_All?_

His gaze falls on Jan, kneeling in the snow, surrounded by the blasted corpses of Chitauri. There are so many they form a barricade of bodies in the snow, but Jan pays them no heed. Her eyes are only on her husband. They are both back to their human size now; in death, his technology has fallen and reverted him to no more than a man. Jan is holding one of his hands between both of hers, and her face is iced over with tears.

"Jan," Loki says, low and breathless, standing over her. She looks up at him slowly and he holds out one hand. "Come with me."

She cringes back from him, eyes wide. "Loki?" she whispers. "Is that you?"

It takes Loki a moment to remember -  _curse this skin_ , he thinks, and with an effort he forces it back to its normal shade. "Come with me, Jan," he says again. "We can still win this. I never told you the truth, but I'm not from this time. I traveled back in time to come here, and I can do it again. And you can come with me, Jan, we'll make this right, I swear."

She just stares at him, too stunned and overwhelmed to respond.

"Come with me," he repeats for a third time, "and I promise you that you will see your husband alive again."

That gets through to her, and slowly she reaches out to take his hand. He pulls her to her feet and they're both off and running, stumbling clumsily through the scattered disarray of the battlefield. When her steps falter, his grip on her tightens and he very nearly drags her along.

He cannot save them, his brothers, his people; he cannot save this world, cannot save his home. But maybe, maybe, he can save just one person.

It's a limping, staggering run across the tundra to the place where he can sense the rift. Loki's magic is too drained to shapeshift into a form that can fly, and Jan seems too deep in shock to think of it. The battle is still going on behind them, the whine and roar of the Chitauri technology now joined by the stutter and bark of more conventional Midgardian weapons. Loki sees two dark streaks flash across the sky, sees the flash of two bright blue sparks as the mini-portals swallow them up.

They are almost to safety - almost - when the earth beneath them shakes violently, throwing them from their feet. As Loki struggles to gain his footing again, he hears Jan scream.

Glancing behind them, Loki catches a glimpse of what he already knew he would see; the brilliant, twisting, terrifying silhouette of Nithhogg's head rising from the earth, slowly turning to point towards them. He grabs Jan's shoulder and jerks her around to face away from it.

"Don't look at it, Jan," he pants, for mortal minds are not built to withstand such sights. "Just  _run!"_

" _What is that thing?"_  Jan says, and she's scared, so scared. Loki pulls her close, tucks her against his side as he nearly drags them both forward. It's not far. They can still make it.

"Oh, God," Jan whimpers, and Loki can feel her shudder and shake against him. "This - this really is the end, isn't it? The end of the world. We - we failed, and now everybody's going to pay..."

"No they won't, Jan, we can still undo it," Loki promises her fervently. "Next time we'll change things, we'll get it right, you and I. We'll have warning, we'll build defenses - we won't fail."

It will be different, going through the timeline with Jan by his side. It will be  _different._  He won't be so alone, he won't have to hold in every word, terrified to let slip the wrong truth to anyone. Jan will remember as he does, will share in his memories in experience; he'll have someone who  _understands_ him, someone who believes him and will never doubt him. Perhaps with Jan vouching for his story, he will not have to conceal the truth of what he has seen -

The ground begins to shake again, and the two of them stagger like drunks across the slippery, unsteady ice. Suddenly the ice opens up before them, revealing a deep blue-green crack that extends miles downwards into darkness. An old scar, the tearing apart of two age-old glaciers that never healed right, a rip in space itself. Loki feels the cold breath of the Void on his face and knows they have found their escape.

"Jan, listen to me," Loki says, and he cups her face with both hands and forces her to meet his eyes. "We have to jump in here. It'll be dark, and you may be frightened, but there's nothing in there that can hurt you. It might be best if you keep your eyes closed, but  _don't let go of my hand,_  do you hear me? I will guide us both to safety. Whatever you do, just don't let go."

Jan gasps, and gives a tiny nod. Loki releases her face and takes her elbow, sliding his hand down to squeeze hers. "That's a brave girl," he whispers.

"Let's go," Jan says, her voice trembling but determined. "Let's get this son-of-a-bitch. I-in the past."

The quaking beneath their feet is increasing, and Loki can feel the hot breath of chaos on the back of his neck as Nithhogg nears. He gives Jan's hand one more squeeze, then pulls them both forward into the Void.

Loki falls, and he keeps Jan's hand caught tight in his own as he drags them both through the howling silent currents of nothingness. He no longer fears the Void, for he is its master, and he knows how to command it: he needs only concentrate on his destination, the place and the time, and he will be there. Here there are no secrets, no constrained maneuvers or compromises.

Here he is timeless. He is eternal. He is invincible.

He is  _God_.

Loki sets them down on a beach outside Malibu, a place he knows thanks to its nearness to Tony's summer home. He figures the warmth will be welcome, after the rigors of Antarctica and the Void, and he and Jan will have a chance to rest and regroup.

He turns to see if his decision has pleased his companion, his lips parting for speech.

His gaze lands on nothing.

Slowly, he raises his clenched hand to his side, and forces his fingers to open. His hand is empty. Jan is gone.


	5. The Final Assault [courage]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki takes matters into his own hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit Thanos is hard to write. My apologies to any Marvel fans if I got him wrong.
> 
> I made some attempts to look up Thanos' secret evil villain base as research for the scene where Loki busts in. But the only thing I turned up for Thanos' villainous lair was [THIS THING,](http://thebrotherhoodofevilgeeks.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/8e0f6d99f6c0f0b1789a13e09153b35f-e1363656627308.jpg?w=604) which I could not in good conscience put to paper. Is that skull wearing a fez? Is the fez a _dalek?_ So many questions. Anyway, I figure Thanos can have more than one vacation home.

For a while, Loki almost gives in to despair.

In the end, though, he rouses himself from the blind hopelessness that had clouded his thoughts, picks himself up and dusts himself off. He is too restless to do anything else. Lying in a stupor and waiting listlessly for the end of the universe, he finds, is boring.

_Well._

So what? So what if the Avengers die? So what if any of them die? He can always bring them back again. Death is no obstacle, not when Loki has the power to reset time. He has but to step into the void, and they'll all be alive again.

He will succeed. This time he will succeed. And if he fails, what of it? He can reset the board and try again. He can try as many times as he needs to get it right; he has infinite chances.

There is no possible way that he can fail. None.

None at all.

* * *

The first thing he does when he returns to Earth is to search for her. He is a little anxious that her hand slipped from his grasp without his noticing. Although he knows - intellectually - that the timeline has reset exactly the way it was before he changed it, that she has simply returned to her place like any other object he picked up and moved around, still - he wants to be sure.

Except he can't find her.

The Avengers mansion - the  _Van Dyne_  mansion - is occupied by strangers. There's no sign of Jan there, no sign she ever lived there, no sign of her at the other Van Dyne residence in New York. He searches for her in an ever-widening spiral, worry rising to something like desperation - at all her favorite restaurants, her clubs, her favorite stores. Cloaked from human view he searches the crowds, his eyes open for the flash of her red-brown hair, his ear tilted for the sound of her laughter. But there is none.

He goes back to the university where she and Hank first met, and there, at least, he does find a face he knows: Hank Pym, a graduate student in the particle physics department. He's working his way through his doctorate, writing purely theoretical papers that few people will ever read, paying his expenses on the meager wage earned by teaching entomology classes on the side. He's currently single.

Loki breaks off the search before he can track it back to Jan's family home, telling himself that he has not the time to waste in pointless pursuits such as these. The fate of the world hangs in the balance; why waste time fretting over the fate of one mortal girl?

He needs this not - this, this  _sentiment,_  this sensation as of hooks dragging their way along under his skin. What are the mortal 'heroes' to him but a distraction and a liability? No longer will Loki burden himself with their care. He has learned his lesson; he should have learned it long ago. They are useless, pitiful, fragile things; they have nothing to offer him, and they die far too easily.

Nor will he commit the folly of appealing to the obstinate, uncaring king of Asgard. He knows full well that they will not act, that he need not humiliate himself by asking (again) only to be left standing, hands and face upturned for a beneficence that never comes. He doesn't need them, he never did. Midgard cannot aid him, and Asgard will not aid him; he is Loki, and to be Loki is to be alone.

No matter; he understands his mistake now. It was folly to wait for the Chitauri to strike first, to allow them to arrange the battlefield to the strengths of their own armies and the disarray of all others. If Loki wishes defeat him,  _he_  must take control: he will bring the fight to the Chitauri's own territory. He who strikes first is victorious; he learned that lesson at the All-Father's knee.

But first he must get there, and the way is closed to him. He can only use the Void to travel to places he has been before, and he has seen the Chitauri's homeworld only in hazy glimpses through the portal. And he must consider how to level the devastation he intends. The Casket of Winters (though returned to its full power as he passed through the Void) will not be enough for such a strike, not even if he opens it to its full potential without concern for the fragile mortal bodies around him. No, he needs something more.

He needs transportation, and he needs power. Fortunately, he knows where to get both in one.

The Tesseract.

The prospect of stealing it from the humans lends him no remorse whatsoever. It is blatantly obvious by this point that Fury and his minions are utterly incapable of either using it properly nor keeping it safe. They are not fit guardians for such a relic of power. Such an artifact belongs in the hands of the gods. But SHIELD has hidden the Tesseract away, and he has never been able to find it in all his years of searching. He had been constrained, of course, in maintaining his facade of heroism; that had blocked him from the more direct methods of gathering information. But he is constrained no more.

He still does not know where the Tesseract is. But he knows who  _will_ know.

* * *

He uses the Void to reset time again, then steps out into the deserts of New Mexico at the Bifrost site a mere five minutes after his fall. He swiftly cloaks his presence from eyes both magical and mortal; he does not wish for the attentions of either.

His brother's conjured storm is just now dying down, the unnaturally thick black clouds slowly peeling back from blue sky. A group of mortals is still clustered about the Bifrost site; the interminable Agent Coulson, a gaggle of black-suited footsoldiers, and a pair of mortal women, their long dark hair whipped by the wind.

He recognizes Jane Foster, Thor's mortal, from the glimpses he'd once had of her from the Bifrost. In another time he might have found it in him to be jealous of her, but now such concerns seem small and far away.

The mortal he seeks is not standing with the others, so Loki turns away to head back to the tiny mortal village to seek him. As he turns away he hears soft words coming from behind him: "He's not coming back," Jane says, her voice quiet and desolate. "Is he."

Loki pauses for a moment, then he scoffs to himself and turns away. _Now you see what your precious golden prince's word is worth, Jane Foster,_ he thinks viciously.  _Welcome to my world._

He follows the trail of destruction - half Thor's, half the Destroyer's - back into town, and begins to cast about for his quarry. At last he finds him: Erik Selvig, the mortal sorcerer who aided Foster in her craft. He's being loaded onto a stretcher by a pair of solicitous young men in white uniforms, a white mask fitted over his face, although Loki cannot see or sense anything wrong with him: shock, perhaps. The man is not young.

The ambulance doors slam, and Loki trades his invisibility for a set of feathered wings, flying up in the form of a crow to perch at the edge of the van. No point in exhausting himself in flight, after all, when he can simply hitch a ride.

Loki's strategy is simple. In every loop so far, Loki has been unable to find where SHIELD had the Tesseract hidden. Yet Selvig has each time been murdered while working for SHIELD on the Tesseract project, which means that sometime between now and then, SHIELD must have recruited him to puzzle over their mystery. All Loki needs to do is follow him, and Selvig will lead him right to the Tesseract.

It is not the swiftest or most streamlined of plans. But if there is one thing Loki has in abundance, it is time.

The healers keep Selvig overnight in the hospital, then release him; they diagnose him with no more than a nasty shock. He retires to a bland room in a local inn with stern admonitions to rest. Loki, still in the form of a bird, perches like a stone above the door lintel, waiting. So long as he makes no menacing move towards the mortals, Odin should not interfere; in this timeline Odin does not even know he lives. (Or care, or care.)

Days pass quietly; Selvig continues to mind his own business, only occasionally going out for food, otherwise reading or watching television. Jane Foster disappears in a flurry of black SHIELD helicopters to continue her research under their eye. It is her ambition to somehow recreate the Bifrost, or another world-gate like it; ambitious, for a mortal, but Loki knows by now not to underestimate mortal magic. She might even succeed some day, who knows - but since she doesn't succeed before the Chitauri invasion comes, it is of no use to Loki.

The scorching days and cold nights offer Loki plenty of time to brood, more than he would like. He devises a ward to place on Selvig that will link the mortal to him; partly the protective ward he used with Tony and the other Avengers, partly a bindrune similar to the one that Odin placed on him to bind his magic. The spell is invisible, intangible, but it creates a channel between them: he can sense the mortal's thoughts no matter how much space separates them, and even gives him a degree of influence.

He is careful, in doing so, not to damage the human's mind; he needs the connections Selvig will provide, but Thor has ever been possessive about his toys, and he would take it ill to find Loki in close proximity to one of 'his' mortal pets. He likely would assume Loki was acting purely to spite him, ignoring all the other priceless opportunities that Selvig offers on his own merits. No doubt Thor, as always, would assume everything to be about him, him, him.

With the binding in place Loki is more free to move about, although he remains veiled and hidden from sight. Too many times, in the past, he has found himself stymied by a lack of knowledge of where things are on Earth, or how things work. He flies from point to point and watches, and listens, and explores with his magic, and there is much he learns.

The break he is seeking comes two months after what would have been his fall from the Bifrost, two months after his third return to Earth. Selvig has been packing his belongings, having scheduled a return flight to Iceland the following morning. As the sun creeps down in the desert sky, a long black chariot snakes its way through the rebuilt town and stops in front of the inn where Selvig has been staying. Loki doesn't know if SHIELD had planned to make a move on Selvig all this time, or were waiting for him to reach out to them; either way, they wait no longer.

Selvig accepts their proffered invitation with a mix of curiosity and reluctance, and the caravan leads him to the nearby small airport, where a small jet plane waits for them to board. There is no way that Loki can fly as fast as the plane and no room onboard for him to hide, so he slips into his reflection and slides into the glass-and-and-metal side of the airplane.

It's well after dark when the jet lands, on an anonymous airfield somewhere in the mountains. Selvig is escorted by his guard off the plane and through a large hangar into an underground tunnel delving deep back into the rock. Nervousness is definitely outweighing curiosity, by this time; but there is no going back now, so he marches sturdily forwards. Loki glides along in his reflection, silent.

A dark shape steps out of the corridor ahead. It is Fury, hands clasped behind his back and feet apart, a looming bulky figure in his dark leather clothes. From a nearby darkened window out of Fury's line of sight, Loki can't help but scoff at the intimidating picture he presents. He knows well by now that Fury is not nearly so capable as he tries to pretend, else he would not have lost the Tesseract to the Chitauri three times running.

"Dr. Selvig," Fury calls out. Selvig turns with a start.

"So you're the man behind all this!" Selvig says with forced cheerfulness, trying to cover over his anxiety. "It's quite a labyrinth. For a while I thought you were taking me down here to kill me, hahaha!"

It is a poor joke and Fury does not smile at it, instead getting right down to business. "I've been hearing about the New Mexico situation. Your work has impressed a lot of people who are much smarter than I am."

 _Not a terribly difficult bar to pass,_ Loki thinks spitefully.

"I had a lot to work with," Selvig says nervously. "The Foster theory - a gateway to another dimension... It's unprecedented."

It's not; and from the look on Fury's face, he knows it too. Selvig reads his face, pauses uncertainly. "Isn't it?"

"Legend tells us one thing; history another," Fury says, turning and striding back towards a small table set up behind him, a metal case small enough to fit in a man's two hands. Yet large enough to encompass worlds. "But every now and then, we find something that belongs to both."

He unlatches the case, swings it open. Blue light blazes forth from within, bathing the barren concrete corridor walls in the radiance of galaxies. Miniature, fractal, endless.

The Tesseract.

Loki is drawn forward, but Selvig hangs back, and Loki can sense the fear in the mortal's mind. "What is it?" he asks quietly.

"Power, Doctor," Fury says. "If we can figure out how to tap it... maybe  _unlimited_  power."

The secrets of the universe at his fingertips, a boundless fount of knowledge far beyond mortal or even  _Asgardian_  ken - unbounded space rolling away beneath his feet, just a small step to the furthest reaches of the galaxy. Used properly, within a few years this entire realm could rival the glory of Asgard, and yet all the little mortal can think to do with it is make _weapons._  What a forsaken waste this little planet is.

Selvig is hesitating.  _I'm too old for this,_  Loki can feel the mortal thinking.  _I'm just an ordinary man, I can't deal with this kind of mess: monsters and gods and nothing I was ever trained for. I don't know if I'll survive another battle like the last one._

This timidity won't do, it won't do at all. It is all Loki can do to remain hidden, not to surge forward and seize the Tesseract at once, knock the mortals aside and flee with it. But that is sure to draw the ire of Asgard; he must wait for an unguarded moment. And until then, he must keep Selvig in close proximity to the Tesseract - there's no time now to recreate his bond with another mortal.

Loki steps closer in the mirror; none but Selvig can see or hear him. He gives the mortal a mental  _push._ "Well, I guess that's worth a look," Loki purrs, eyes on the Tesseract.

That's enough to tip Selvig over into decision; he gives Fury a broad smile, folding his face into ancient wrinkles. "Well, I guess that's worth a look!" he says, and Fury smiles.

* * *

With his objective so close at hand, it's easier for Loki to be patient. He takes the time to follow Fury and Selvig back to their concealed headquarters, to learn the layout of the underground labs and the surrounding area. One never knows when such knowledge might come in handy. He studies the security surrounding the Tesseract, the pattern of guards and sentries and the capabilities of their armaments.

And one week later when the Tesseract is being transported by convoy from one location to the next Loki emerges from the shadows and launches his attack, seizing the metal case with the Tesseract and killing all the guards.

He feels a faint twinge of guilt about those deaths, and its very mildness almost surprises him - nothing like the physical sickness he felt the first time, when he was forced to slay SHIELD agents in order to escape their custody and flee Nithhogg's devastation. But these deaths are necessary; he cannot leave anyone behind as a witness, to report his face to those who might get in his way. And in the end, what are a handful of mortal lives compared to all of the Nine Realms? If anything, he is  _sparing_  them the horror of Nithhogg's coming.

With the Tesseract cupped safely in his hands, held behind a protective force-field, Loki seeks out a hidden refuge and begins to study his new prize. He cannot learn or exercise all the powers of the Tesseract, of course - an army of Asgardian mages and scholars would need millennia to even approach such an understanding - but he can learn a great deal more of it than the mortals could ever hope to.

Almost the first thing any sorcerer learns in his study of the mysteries of the universe is that matter and energy are one. What is perceived as 'solid mass' is only energy bound up so tightly together that it coalesces from potential into truth. Indeed, a sufficiently powerful mage can with enough effort learn to shave off atoms here and there, using the freed energy to power their greater spells. The practice is frowned upon, though; those who live forever have more time in which to contemplate the consequences of carelessly destroying the gifts that the universe gave to them. There is only so much matter in the universe after all, and making more is prohibitively difficult; what if they run out? Such conversions tend to be messy besides, with unintended consequences and poisoned fate spilling over onto the caster and all those around him.

The Tesseract, however, seems to have no such limitations - the power it generates is truly unbounded. The glittering, hard-edged cube that Loki can  _see_  is but one facet of the Tesseract; its true shape is a vastly complex geode that extends crystal structures in five dimensions. From their flattened, occluded three-dimensional perspective, one facet of the Tesseract appears as a cube, and one edge appears as a corridor. Turn the Tesseract and the edges shift too, bridging the way between one point in space and another.

Asgardian sages say that the universe is but a delicate film of space and time, the skin of a bubble crumpled and bent in dimensions beyond our limited perceptions. And it is not the only such; they theorize that there are countless other universes stacked side by side, each one but a hair's-breadth away in some impossible direction. The Tesseract seems proof that this is so, because it exists simultaneously in  _their_  plane and yet in another, connecting their realm of matter-and-energy to a plane of unbounded energy which never collapsed into  _mass._ It is not a generator but a siphon, allowing them to draw on that unfettered elemental power without end.

The power is heady, intoxicating; he is dizzy with the world of possibilities open to him. For a while he is almost tempted to take the power of the Cube and turn it against Nithhogg himself - surely destroying such an abomination could only be a boon to the universe?

The more he studies the Tesseract's structure, however, the more the idea makes him uneasy, and in the end he concludes that he had better not. The Tesseract is a gateway, a siphon. The Unmaker, according to the best understanding of the scholars of Asgard, is one too - but in the opposite direction.

Trapped beyond the event horizon, Nithhogg feeds upon the blood of dead stars; within his fearsome jaws, the bonds of matter are rent apart, and the very atoms are immolated in a burst of energy. But only a tiny fraction of the energy is actually expressed, the source of the fearsome light that pulses along Nithhogg's body as he feeds. The rest is funneled out of their plane entirely, very likely into the same universe of unbound energy that the Tesseract itself draws from.

Attempting to set the two against each other could set up a feedback loop that could rip the very fabric of reality - tear the entire universe apart, let alone the Nine Realms. No, it is not worth the risk, not even for the prospect of eternal freedom from the threat of the Destroyer. He is far too primal a force of nature; it would be hubris even to try.

Perhaps the most prudent course of action, then, is to do... nothing? Would this be enough? He has the Tesseract; he can protect it far better than the mortals ever could. Cloaked and hidden inside his pocket dimension, the Chitauri will never be able to sense it, let alone steal it. And without the Tesseract to open the door between this planet and theirs, the Chitauri cannot bring their army across. The Realms will be safe.

_Won't they?_

No. No, it is not enough only to close off one door and think themselves safe; of all people in the Nine Realms, Loki Skywalker above all others knows that there is always another door. There is always another door and if you cannot find one, you can make one. No one knows for certain  _why_  the Mad Titan seeks the destruction of the Nine Realms, but it would be folly itself to assume that he would simply abandon his ambitions that easily.

If Loki wishes to make the Nine Realms safe forever, there is only one way: Thanos must end.

* * *

He will need a vessel for the Tesseract; as unimaginably powerful as it can be, the Tesseract is merely a font of power, not a weapon. No matter how bright the flame, one cannot merely hope to wave it at the monsters to drive them away: it must be channeled, shaped, and contained. All the power in the universe is no use to him without some way to direct it, and despite his myriad talents, Loki is no craftsman, no forgesmith.

Fortunately, he already has a container that will be more than suitable. After several days of careful study of the two parts, Loki opens the Casket of Ancient Winters -  _without_  unleashing the Fimbulwinter upon Midgard, thank you - and places the Tesseract inside. It slots into the Casket with a  _click_  that is so satisfyingly  _right_  that Loki almost finds it suspicious. Was the Casket built for the Tesseract, or the Tesseract for the Casket? Or - even more disturbing yet - does the Tesseract  _change_ to fit the Casket?

Whatever the reason, the combination of the two creates a terrifyingly potent weapon. With the power of the Tesseract behind it the Casket's powers no longer obey their old limits; he spends a few days practicing with it in the cold wastes of Midgard before he is satisfied with his control over it.

All that remains is to travel to the Chitauri's homeworld, and that will be no obstacle at all. He could not travel there by way of the Void, as it a place he has never yet seen; but he does not need to. The Tesseract has already laid down a path between the folds of space, and he needs only to step onto it. Attuned with the Tesseract, he can feel it shifting under his skin - a pathway, a door. A bridge across an unfathomable gap, and on the other side... darkness. It calls to him, the blue energy humming and whispering seductively in his veins, like a man standing at the edge of a precipice and hearing the sweet whisper: jump.

But there is one more thing he must do before that.

Invisible and silent he goes to New York City, wending his way through the crowded streets and between dirty buildings to the gleaming glass-and-chrome towers at their center. It is night and Stark Tower is lit up like a beacon, drawing him inexorably forward. How strange it is. He lived in Asgard for hundreds of years. He's lived on Earth in many different places - Avengers Mansion, his studio apartment, the cells at SHIELD. And yet this tower, this arrogant monument to heaven is still what he thinks of when someone says 'home.' Here, Stark Tower, is where it all began for him. And where it all began to end.

Too many times in the past timelines Loki has seen Tony torn away from him, one way or another. Killed before his eyes, killed far out of his sight, turning his back with a bitter sneer upon his lips - Loki must see him once more, to know that he is _alive alive alive_  and to remind himself of what he fights for. He takes flight and skims up the surface of the building, counting the floors as he goes; it is night, so anyone who even looks out of the window will see only a dim silhouette of a man.

He finds Tony Stark in his workshop on the twenty-fifth floor, the room lit by the glow of a dozen workbench lamps. Tony is dressed in a pair of grey sweatpants and a tight black t-shirt; his hair is unkempt and stiff with dried sweat, and black grease stains his hands, smears of it on his forehead or on the glass clutched in his hand. It is well past midnight, but Tony shows no sign of rest; Loki recognizes all the signs of a sleepless night for him. He knows them well.

Even unwashed and unslept he is magnificent, pacing around and around the workroom like a caged tiger, brimming over with a frustrated and restless energy of the mind that he cannot find an outlet for. He is handsome, brilliant and glorious... and Loki, watching him from the window, cannot remember what it was like to be in love with him.

He knows that he  _was_  deliriously in love with Tony Stark, he knows that he was once breathtakingly happy here - but it's dim and remote, as though seen through thick tinted glass. There have been too many years, too much pain and too much acrimony between him and those emotions; he can't remember how they felt. He can even put words to the qualities he admired about Tony, can name each and every one of his moods, the way he moves, the way he kissed... but he can't associate them with any emotions any more.

How strange.

It's deeply troubling, but Loki isn't quite sure what to do about it. He had deliberately loosed himself from the chains of sentimentality; why miss them now? Would he rather be passionately in love with someone who doesn't even know him?

A year ago, that prospect might have filled Loki with despair - now, it hardly troubles him. Even the pain he'd felt when Tony denounced him, denied him - even the horrible crush of betrayal and despair seems to have gone, leaving only a faint ache in its place. Everything, good and bad alike, seems trapped under a thick sheet of silencing glass.

When he comes back, Loki decides, he will have Tony again. He will have Tony and then he will remember what it felt like to be in love, to be happy. It will be his reward to himself, his prize for victory in the battle he must now fight. Tony might not like it, but he will accept it. He won't have a choice.

By then, Loki thinks, he will have earned it.

And with this promise to himself made, Loki steps out of the mirrorpane onto the roof of Stark Tower. It's a beautiful view, the night spreading out below him lit with a thousand stars. Loki raises the Casket and the Tesseract together and closes his eyes so he won't have to see the blue spread over his skin.

But it doesn't stop at his skin, not this time. The whisper of the Tesseract's power washes out from around him in a blow of cold, frost tracing in endless Mandelbrot fractals over the walls and floor and glass planes of the Tower doors.

The portal roars to life before him, a seething chaotic gap in space braced open by an archway of ice. It won't last long, Loki knows; but then, it doesn't need to. Through the portal he sees jagged dark stone, black sky, an endless field of seething stars. He should feel afraid, but instead he feels only a calm serenity. Perhaps this is a warrior's courage; perhaps this is what his brother feels when he goes into battle. It seems he can be a warrior, after all, and it only took the end of the world to arrange it.

Somewhere in the building below him, an alarm is going off; Loki ignores it as he steps into the portal.

 

* * *

 

The Tesseract is many things; a font of power, a myriad of pathways, an endless repository of the secrets of the universe. There are a multitude of adjectives that can be applied to it: wondrous, puissant, terrible.

One thing it is  _not_ , however, is  _subtle_.

His arrival in Chitauri airspace is marked with a show of arcing lights visible from miles away and a deafening  _crash_  as the local space is rudely forced to rearrange itself to make way for the intruder. It's worse than traveling by way of the Bifrost, a method of transport that is indiscreet enough that Loki taught himself to use the dark paths just to avoid having his presence announced with a fanfare every time he wanted to go somewhere.

Upon arrival in his enemy's stronghold Loki had originally planned to cloak himself, to scout the territory for a while before planning the best angle of attack. But with the Tesseract's spectacular method of travel there is no chance of avoiding detection; by the time he arrives there is already a platoon of Chitauri warriors waiting for him.

There's a frozen moment where the two sides just gawp at each other, both too unbalanced from the sudden appearance of enemies to react. But the Chitauri were already expecting a threat, if not  _this_  particular threat: their lieutenant barks a rough order, and half a dozen of the troopers manage to fumble around their weapons to fire bolts of energy at him.

Loki's hands snap up in a defensive stance, the Casket held between them; with barely a thought, a thick wall of shimmering ice whirls around him and swallows the missiles without a blink.

The first blow is much in any combat, but it is not all - especially not when they face so potent a foe. Loki sends shards of ice bursting outwards, flinging like shrapnel into the crowd, and the Chitauri scream in pain as the jagged ice chips slash through them.  _These_  missiles of ice carry a potent kinetic charge in them that tears through their armor and flesh like tissue paper, and the Chitauri lines waver and fall; half slumping in death, half scrambling to get clear of the blast zone.

The ranks of soldiers behind them do not seem to have gotten the message, or perhaps they are made of sterner stuff; after firing several volleys of energy blasts and projectile bullets at him without effect, they roar and charge him with wicked-looking blades. Loki responds with blades of his own; whirling globes of jagged-edged ice slice outwards from the Casket, splitting again and again to knife through the ranks of his enemies. Now that the line of sight has cleared somewhat, Loki has a better view of the battlefield. He raises the Casket and calls down a rain of ice from above, a howling blizzard of death from which there is no escape.

So much for stealth. Loki has learned from his years of adventuring with Thor that there is a time for careful manipulation, but there is also a time to just roll with the chaos.

He finds himself laughing with exhilaration, with sheer disbelief at how  _easy_  this is. The Chitauri against which he had strained and struggled on the battlefields on Earth now fall before him like wheat before the thresher. He slays them by the tens, by the dozens - the greatest difficulty is in gathering enough foes together to kill enough in one blow.

They are fleeing him now, scattering in every direction as they run for their holes like rabbits. Loki steps forward, raises the Casket, and sends deep slashes of ice ripping through the very ground beneath their feet, zigzagging in every direction and opening up deep yawning chasms and deadly pits lined with razor-sharp spikes. Shaken from their feet the Chitauri tumble into the pits, shrieking and clawing for purchase, only to be silenced when the ice closes in with a vicious crunch.

He walks forward over the ground, scarred by icefall and stained with frozen blood, uncontested. The barren world stretches out before him in all direction, and Loki summons an arching bridge of ice to raise him above the pitted plain.

Mountains loom at the edge of the horizon, jagged vistas that march off into the distance, but one peak stands out from the others. Twisted peaks and ridges claw at the sky, but it is far too symmetrical to be natural. The mountain has been carved into a fortress, a sprawling edifice of dark stone with its maker's symbol gouged glowing into the impassive rock faces. Higher up on the fortress, wide windows gape to welcome the cold dark wind from between the stars; at the highest peak, a stone fork thrusts upwards to support a round platform and a done, blending the darkness of the stone below with the eternal darkness in the sky above.

Loki knows the sigil. He knows the builder, knows him by name and reputation and, once, by face.

Thanos, the Mad Titan. Here he sits and broods, here he studies the sky and plots for ways to bring Death closer.

Today, Loki has come to grant his fondest wish.

Loki begins to stride across the plain, creating ice bridges behind him to push his pace quicker. The remaining Chitauri forces scramble to get out of his way, which Loki finds satisfying and appropriate. Only once do they attempt to impede him, when a hastily-assembled artillery unit on a distant ridge attempts to shell him. Loki deflects the missiles with little difficulty, then turns to face the distant cluster of foes surrounding the spiderlike, crouching metal cannon.

He summons to his hand a pulsing bolt of energy, fire and frost swirling together in a yin-yang of destruction, and unleashes it upon his target. The artillerymen turn to bolt, but there is little time before the howling missile connects; a broad arc of cold energy freezes the hapless soldiers in place, moments before the roaring fire falls upon the weapon and consumes it - and them.

No one else attempts to impede him.

As he approaches Thanos' citadel he begins to feel rising heat upon his face and hands, and sees a dull red glow reflected on the underside of the darkened stone. He boosts himself with a pillar of ice to get a better look, and his lip curls with distaste at what he sees. A  _lava moat?_  Truly? Millenia of life spent in obsessive pursuit of Death has not taught Thanos any ingenuity, it seems, nor taste.

The lava moat is more like a lake, a wide expanse of seething molten rock surrounding the citadel. It is breached only by a thin stone span that is, of course, now retracted. This poses no obstacle for Loki - he could easily boost himself over the moat with a bridge of ice, or fly - but he wishes to make a point. He raises the Casket, calls on the power of the Tesseract, and floods the lava field with ice.

Ice meets fire in explosive elemental fury, and Loki laughs again as the grinding, cracking noise of supercooling stone shakes the foundations the citadel stands on. He continues to pour out cold until the lava is quenched, its heat given over to cold all the way down to the foundation, and then he brings the ice back up again - creeping, grinding, pressing against the foundations and the walls of the citadel itself.

The stone shudders in agony as the Tesseract-summoned glacier presses upon it, but yet holds. Perhaps it needs more encouragement. Loki lifts one hand to the sky and calls upon the combined power of the two artifacts; a fine frost in the air is all the warning there is before a meteor of ice screams down from above to crash into the citadel walls like a ballistae missile.

Loki amuses himself for a while longer, bringing bigger and bigger missiles down upon the castle from above while his ice slowly crushes it to powder from below, but at length he grows impatient with this approach. The citadel, as the best fortresses are, is simply too tough to crush from outside. With the infinite power of the Tesseract he could still do it - eventually - but it would take a long time, and in the chaos Thanos might well slip away.

No - it is time to take this fight directly to his enemy.

Abating the pressure of his glaciers, Loki drops lightly to his feet from the few feet he'd been hovering in the air and begins to walk towards the citadel doors. Frost follows his footsteps, pacing alongside him to form a smooth white bridge that spans the way from his position to the doors, and Loki mounts it lightly, the Tesseract cradled in his grip.

A battering ram of supercharged ice strikes the doors once, twice, thrice before it gives way, and Loki steps over the twisted remains of the great doors, bringing the blizzard inside with him.

As he moves forward into the vestibule, a rush of foul air washes over him from the hallway beyond, and Loki flinches back as a green mist floods his face and makes his eyes water. He gasps for breath before he can stop himself and a searing, acrid taste pours down his throat and makes him cough. Summoning a blast of arctic wind, Loki scours the room and the hallway beyond it clear of the poison... but it is too late to expunge the first dose, and as he moves forward through the citadel the walls seem to sway and shrink a bit in the corner of his vision.

"Thanos!" Loki calls out, his voice a bit hoarse. "Lover of Death, come forth! I have come to send you to your Lady!"

"Another assassin?" The voice that floats from the cross-corridor ahead sounds like two boulders grating against each other, and the tone is nothing more than disinterested and weary. A looming silhouette appears at the end of a long hallway, broad and bulky and rugged. "But you - you are not the run-of-the-mill mercenary the others send. What is that you carry, assassin?"

Loki turns to face him and grins like a madman, raising the cask in both hands. "Your demise, madman!" he says, and fires a spear of electrified ice down the hallway.

The silhouette of Thanos vanishes. Loki bolts forward in pursuit of his prey, only to be brought up short when what he thought was a doorway instead turns out to be a mirror, which he meets in a painful and embarrassing crash. How had he not noticed before that this place was a maze of walls and mirrors? That wretched smoke must be affecting him more than he thought.

So Thanos wants to play hide and seek, does he? Well, Loki can play. Any doors in this place are well-concealed, known only to their maker, but who needs to find a door when you can simply make one of your own? He smashes the mirror-wall ahead of him, revealing another long corridor, and strides down it.

Bodies materialize out of doorways on either side and fling themselves at him, snarling with bloodlust or silent and deadly with sharp daggers. Loki blasts each one almost negligently with short, easy bursts of power from the Tesseract, slicing through them with blades of frost or just freezing them in solid tombs of ice. Some are Chitauri, but others are not, races of far-off galaxies Loki only dimly recognizes. Servants or sworn armsmen of Thanos - Loki doesn't know which and doesn't particularly care. These lackeys are not his target, they are not worth his time or attention. All that matters is Thanos, to find him and to end him as quickly and ruthlessly as possible.

A clacking sound comes from the walls, and Loki feels a sudden sting on the side of his neck and arm. Glancing down he sees a line of wicked, needle-sharp darts clinging tenaciously to his armor; most of them were not able to penetrate to his skin, fortunately. He rips them out with one hand and throws them to the floor with a growl. Powerless minions and cheap booby-traps, is this really the best that Thanos can do?

Well, he need not play this game by Thanos' rules. Loki raises the Casket again, braces himself, and blasts out waves of furious cold in a ring with himself at the center. The rings of energy batter against the comparatively flimsy interior walls, battering them to splinters before sweeping them away outwards to do it again.

Splinters of wood, chips of stone and melted silicon rain down around him as paneling and decoration and circuitry are all crushed under the assault. The ceiling above him buckles, starts to fall and then is blasted up and outwards by the hurricane of ice. Humanoid creatures caught within the blast wave scream in terror and pain, but only very briefly before their voices are silenced forever.

When the waves of energy clears, he is standing in a much larger space, the hollowed-out interior of the massive citadel seen from outside. All the concealing decorations and whatever clever little traps they hid have been swept away, leaving only the vast stone load-bearing pillars marching away in each direction.

"You are a stubborn one," the monotone voice comes again, and Loki turns towards a vast open space between the pillars, the bare skeleton of what was once a great hall. The great craggy shape of Thanos unfolds slowly from a vast rock-hewn throne, the silhouette of it oddly topheavy and lopsided. "I see I shall have to dispose of you myself."

At last, at last the way to his quarry is clear, and Loki throws himself forward, clenching his hands tightly on the Casket as he moves and drawing a greedy draught of energy from the Tesseract within. Even as Thanos raises one hand Loki strikes, unleashing a blistering attack at Thanos - only to scream in surprise and agony as the torrent of energy is unexpectedly and painfully rebounded back upon him.

The pain is shocking, and it takes Loki a moment to realize what has happened. The pillars. The vast, rough-hewn pillars that disappear into darkness above and below are seething with light, now, residual energy from the same attack that he had launched at Thanos. Grounding pillars, an elementary defense against magical attacks - but a very strong one, all the same. Loki should have known that Thanos would have such a thing built into his very stronghold.

But it will not save him. Loki grits his teeth and pulls magic from the Tesseract again, channeling it carefully into a more controlled and crafted spell. He throws his arm forward and a bolt of frostfire spins from his fingertips, the same searing magic that had immolated the artillerymen outside.

It strikes true, and Loki's heart leaps in joy as the uncanny flame catches and roars to life around the Titan, freezing even as it burns. He tries to step forward but something catches at his heels, at his legs, holding him fast in place; it nearly trips him, and he barely catches himself from falling flat on his face. He curses himself for his carelessness; how could he have been so focused upon his target as to wander blithely into a snare-spell?

The roar of frostfire is abruptly quenched into a hissing sound, and Loki's eyes widen in horror and disbelief as Thanos steps forward out of the conflagration, flames dying down about him. His armor is frost-rimed and cracking, his skin scorched - but he otherwise seems unharmed. How can that  _be?_

"What is that you bear, assassin?" Thanos steps forward again, his Void-dark eyes intent on the Casket in Loki's hands. "Not your little box of snow, but what is inside. It has been long since I sensed such a power."

He raises his hand and gestures, and an invisible force grips the casket and  _pulls._  It is not a spell, Loki would have sensed and countered a spell, but instead the strange pure magic of psionics. It is a power unheard of in Asgard, barely known in all of the Nine Realms, and Loki had never heard of anyone or  _anything_  possessing it in such potency.

He clutches the Casket to him, calling ice to seal his grip around it, but the first tendrils of panic are beginning to touch in his heart. He has come this far, across time and space and worlds uncounted, driven a wake of destruction into the very heart of his enemy's stronghold, all to win this chance to strike Thanos down before he can strike at them. He has risked himself and the Casket and the Tesseract and the future of the Nine Realms all on this one act, and now his enemy  _will not fall._

Loki bursts into action, launching a flurry of attacks into the air before him. Pure bolts of energy are fruitless, Thanos' defenses only turn them back against him - fire and frost are too ephemeral, Thanos shrugs them off with disinterest. The razored blades of ice that Loki sends raking through the air ahead of him  _do_  make an impact, clawing gashes into his armor and into the stone-rough skin beneath it - but Thanos does not bleed, and he does not falter.

He won't  _die._ Loki snarls in panicked frustration and opens the Casket to its fullest, something he has never dared to do before.  _Winter_  bursts forth, howling a blizzard song of freedom as it floods out into the skeletal throne room. The air is filled with flensing particles of ice, rime coating every available surface, and the ground below shudders under a coat of creeping ice as a planet-deep cold envelops them.

Icy mist begins to rain down around them as the air itself chills to liquid, then to ice particles. Even Loki can feel the cold as the exposed heart of the Tesseract urges the Casket onwards to heights it could never have achieved on its own. Thanos moves slowly, ponderously as ice races up his legs and arms and cracks in thick panels over his chest and neck and face.

The last of the air falls to the floor in silent snow and Loki begins to truly panic. The temperature of the throne room is rapidly approaching absolute zero, the utter stillness of the cold that existed before the universe was born, and even frost giants were not made for such a cold. His hands and feet have gone numb, his limbs shot with frozen pain, and he cannot breathe. And still -  _still_  Thanos will not fall.

"Such a relic is the legacy of the old gods," Thanos says, and his overpowering, rumbling voice sounds directly in Loki's head despite the lack of air to carry it. "Power wishes to be wielded by power. One such as you is not worthy.  _Give it to me."_

The words are accompanied by a roaring rush of power, a blast of compulsion such as Loki has never felt. It sends him staggering back, head swimming and chest seizing - without his concentration the spell of the Casket snaps, and the snow on the floor of the throne room boils up abruptly into atmosphere again. Thanos' power races over his skin, crawling in his ears and eyes and mouth with sweet, terrible whispers.  _Submit_ , they hiss,  _submit come to me bow kneel before me obey give it to me submit..._

But he is Loki, a prince of Asgard, an agent of chaos. He is no lackey and he will not be controlled. " _No,"_  he gasps, shoving away the strangling touch of psionic command with all his strength. "I will not - I will  _not."_

"A pity," Thanos grunts, his voice returned to its flat, toneless quality now that it is heard with the ears and not with the mind. "You could have spared your clever bones."

He extends one hand again, massive as a shovel, the fingers flat and square and thick as sausages. The telekinetic power surges again, but this time its target is not the Casket, but Loki himself.

An invisible grip clamps down around Loki's hands, as hard and unyielding as an iron gauntlet, and Loki screams in shock as his hands and fingers are crushed beneath its force. He can  _hear_  the slender bones crack, the ligaments snap, but he cannot feel anything but white-hot waves of  _pain._

He struggles against it, straining to lift the Casket to his defense, but there is no shield Loki knows that will block this magnitude of psionic power, and he cannot think - he cannot concentrate, not with the sunfire ball of  _pain_  that is burning up his wrists and arms to consume him - he cannot think - with his hands squeezed in this merciless grasp he cannot free them to cast, he cannot -

In panic he tries to turn and flee, but the horrible vice that holds his hands pins him in place and the snare pins him to the floor and anyway, there is nowhere to go. Not with the surviving Chitauri crowding around to close his path behind him; he was a fool and he never gave a thought to his escape route, intent only on getting far enough to make his kill. He needs to teleport, veil himself in darkness, find an entrance to the dark paths or to the Void and get away from here. But magic needs either word or gesture to manifest, and with his hands broken and his voice consumed with shrieks he can do neither.

He sags to the floor, Thanos' power settling heavily around him like clanking chains. The Titan strides towards him, slow, measured steps that betray no eagerness, but his eyes are intent on the blazing fire held in Loki's grasp. Loki's hands are not numb - he does not have that mercy - but they do not obey his commands any more. When Thanos' hand reaches out to him, filling his vision, he can offer no further resistance. The Titan rips the Casket from his impotent grasp, wringing another scream from his throat as the ice that he had used to seal his hands to the Tesseract pulls and stretches those formless bags of broken meat before they crack and give way.

Thanos straightens, his eyes fixed on his prize without sparing a glance for Loki's crumpled form. The Casket seethes and hisses, scalding his leathery hand with frost burn, but Thanos ignores it as he turns the relic to study it from all sides. "A relic of Jotunheim?" he muses, talking to himself. "Clumsy and crude, like its makers. No, I cannot believe that one of those savages could come this far without aid. But what is this within?" A beam of the Tesseract's light catches his eye, and he raises his other hand to grip the form of the Casket and  _crush_ , crumpling the sides of the ancient artifact as though they were cellophane.

The Casket of Ancient Winters is thousands of years old, imbued with the spirit of countless generations of Jotunheim. Even when it was stolen by the All-Father, torn from its rightful place in the universe and locked in a vault, still its conquerors knew it for a sacred thing and treated it respectfully - after all, fear is another form of respect. A magical artifact that old, that powerful has a sentience all its own, even if it is nothing that can be thought of as a person - but it is alive in its own way, and it shrieks in outrage and agony as Thanos's careless strength rends it apart. The soundless howl makes the walls shake, makes every bone in Loki's body throb with molten pain. For he too is a Frost Giant, however he would deny it, and he is a mage, and to witness the careless desecration of such a relic is a horror to him.

Blue liquid bursts from the Casket and runs down Thanos' arms like blood, curdling and boiling in the air. Thanos disregards it, merely shaking his hand in something like distaste as he drops the shattered, crumpled corpse of the Casket to the floor like so much refuse.

"Ah," Thanos sighs as the glowing crystal at the center of the Casket's corpse reveals itself. It bathes him in a harsh white illumination, lighting his face from below and throwing his features into a hideous relief. "The Cube of the Cosmos. Long have I heard rumor of its power, but I never dreamed that I would hold it in my hands."

He manages to tear his gaze from the Tesseract long enough to glance at Loki, sprawled on the floor and still shaking with the agony of the Casket's death, staring up at Thanos with the slow horror of realization as it begins to dawn on him just how badly things have gone wrong, wrong,  _wrong_. "My thanks, little giant," he says carelessly. "With this, all distant corners of the universe shall be within reach of my grasp. All things now become possible, and my plans can proceed more swiftly than ever before.

"For the service you have done me," Thanos continues, "I shall forgive your impertinence in trespassing upon my realm, tearing holes in my palace and attacking my person."

For a moment hope surges up in Loki's breast, almost more painful than the lines of agony that follow every nerve. Thanos is going to let him go free, the fool! He does not know that Loki can still win. He can fix this, he can fix this, he can escape to the Void and start again, he can -

"However," Thanos says, his head turning slightly to rest his eyes upon something behind Loki. "You have also killed many of my servants, the Chitauri. For that, their surviving kin demand vengeance... and let no one say of Thanos that I am an unjust god."

Hands seize him, slimy hands with too many fingers, chittering voices howling words of fury and bloody retribution. How did he not even see them come in? His vision is swimming with bright haze and the ground shifts below him like a heaving ship. He struggles against them, throws his weight against their punishing grip, but he has been brought low and stripped of all power that he might once have called upon to defend him. They force him upright and pull his arms out to the side, racking him between two burly Chitauri guards. The pain in his hands engulfs his world, magnified by every jolt and impact.

Thanos turns away, already lost in brooding contemplation of his new prize. He thinks nothing of turning his back carelessly on his would-be killer, and Loki chokes on despair as the creature he came to destroy slips from his broken, bloodied grasp.

Then the beating begins, fueled by blood-vengeance and the helplessness of their prey. He starts screaming after the seventh blow. He passes out by the twelfth.

 

* * *

Time seems to stretch and flow, bent at odd angles. Sometimes days will go by in a hectic confusion of scorching lights, bright colors, cacophonic voices and pain; other times one moment seems to freeze and stretch out into eternity, every second agonizingly clear.

The time he spends with the Chitauri is time he does not dwell upon. They are a cruel people; not savage, like the Frost Giants, but all too sophisticated in their sadism. They hate him with a passion he has never had the misfortune to know before. He cannot take his body away, but he can take his mind away, and so he does. He does.

At times Thanos will come to him and those times, he cannot escape. Thanos brings him a bit of glass, glowing with blue star-fire, and with it he seizes hold of Loki's mind and makes it his. Then the questions begin:  _What are the defenses of Earth? Where are their armies located? What weapons do they have available to them? How many troops? How many heroes? What are their capabilities? What are their names? What of Asgard? Will they come to the defense of Earth? What are their weaknesses? How do we kill them?_

He has no choice but to answer. It is not a question of will. If he could have told them anything to make the pain stop, he would, but the Chitauri are not interested in his words and Thanos is not interested in  _bargains_. What he commands, Loki does. What he asks, Loki answers.

But even with the starkest truth, a trickster can lie, for Loki notices after a few of these sessions that Thanos only demands answers to questions he actually  _asks_. He only requires obedience to orders actually given. Loki does not have to do anything that Thanos does not tell him to, and he does not have to tell Thanos anything that the Titan does not ask. It's an interesting omission. Something to take note of, that Loki locks down deep inside himself with his most deeply-buried kernel of self.

Because Thanos is not  _interested_  in Loki. Loki to him is but a means to an end, a repository of answers. For all his power, Thanos lacks curiosity; he understands only the black-and-white absolutism of utter obedience. He does not care how Loki came to be here, why he came here, how he came to know what he knows, and so he does not ask. And Loki does not tell him.

It's interesting, that's all. That he can resist the Mind Gem in such a simple little way. Loki does not let himself build castles in the air upon that little fact, but he notices.

The plans for the invasion proceed apace, Thanos' war machine picking up steam with the inevitability of an avalanche. Loki is not, of course, given the liberty to see it from himself; but he can piece the picture together from the questions that Thanos asks, from the bored chatter of his jailors.

If he could he would laugh in Thanos' face for the obsessive dedication he puts into defeating Midgard, the planning he puts into his blitz. If he could he would tell Thanos just how pathetic Midgard's resistance will be, how brief and how fruitless. Thanos doesn't need to wring every last detail of Midgard's defenses out of Loki; he would (will) massacre them just as well without.

So his presence here, at least, has not made things appreciably worse. During his brief lucid periods, Loki consoles himself with that thought. No matter what mistakes and atrocities Loki commits, he cannot make things any  _worse_.

* * *

Loki counts his blessings, piece by piece.

One: he is not dead. So long as he lives, he hasn't lost yet.

Two: the Chitauri are alien enough to the people of the Nine that their sexual proclivities do not seem to overlap; whatever else might become of him, they seem uninterested in rape.

Three: the Chitauri do not favor mutilation. They seem to have a cultural preference for energy versions of everything - force-fields instead of walls, pulse weapons instead of projectile. Instead of whips and chains, they have clever neural devices, that reach under his skin without leaving a mark (on the outside) and set a fire that screeches along his bones and burns up every nerve into his brain, his guts, his heart - _no._

No. Away. He sends his thoughts away. He does not linger here.

And last: None of this is real. None of it.

* * *

From time to time they take him from his cell, to drag him unresisting to the laboratory or the arena. One night (it's always night here) they bring him somewhere different, up a punishing flight of stairs to the needle of Thanos' dark and deserted citadel. The whole procession has a carnival air to it; the Chitauri joke and chatter to each other, and one of them carries a flask of some liquid that blasts a foul reek into the air around him.

Loki does not resist as they drag him through the corridors, does not resist as they prod him to climb the stairs to the platform, does not resist as their hands seize his head and wrench it painfully back to face the sky, clawtips digging into the skin of his face as they hold it steady.

In the sky, a fire is just igniting upon the deep; a dull orange glow that quickly builds to a writhing halo of white light. It pulses like a quasar, bright and dim and brightening again, a scorching radiance that hurts the eye, but the claws gripping his skull will not allow him to turn away, nor to close his eyes.

"That's your world burning, Asgardian scum," one of his captors hisses in his ear. "That's your home going up in smoke. Everyone you ever knew, any fool who ever loved you - they're all dead now, screaming in the flames. That's what happens to the weak. What do you think of that, eh, softskin?"

Loki thinks it's rather pretty, actually.

He doesn't need to imagine his world crumbling, his friends and family burning, because that's all old news to him by now. He's seen his world end before, seen it up close; he's seen the buildings collapse and the oceans boil. Watching it now from the outside - fireworks across millions of miles of silent space - is  _nothing_ when compared to that.

He sits and watches the lightshow for a while longer, as the bright wyrm Nithhogg writhes and uncoils in a thread of searing light across the sky. Watches the dim outline of the dying Tree spreading grey tendrils across the sky, infecting every world cradled in its boughs with death.

At length the Chitauri grow impatient with his lack of reaction; one of them clubs him over the head to keep him quiet, and they drag him back inside.

* * *

Some days later (it is always night here,) Thanos comes to visit him in his cell.

It is not much of a cell, certainly not by Asgard's standards - a hole in the rock, roughly cut, with gaps in the stone wall here and there sealed by the force-fields the Chitauri favor. Thanos looms in front of the doorway, and the space hardly seems big enough to contain him - but then, in terms of absolute measurements Thanos is not much taller than Loki, if considerably broader. It is only the force of his presence, the heavy miasma of death hanging about him, that makes him seem so much bigger.

A few servants hang back around the doorway of the cell, hovering nervously - perhaps they do not like the thought of Thanos entering the presence of the assassin who tried to kill him. Fools if they are, fools who can never have tasted Thanos' power themselves.  _Lucky_ fools.

"Rejoice, little giant," Thanos intones. "Thanos has come to grant you audience."

Loki wonders, not for the first time, why Thanos keeps insisting on referring to himself in the third person. "I am flattered," he says, his voice thin and gasping, but at least he manages to keep it steady, to shore it up with a thin facsimile of his old biting sarcasm. "But really, you shouldn't have."

Thanos does not laugh, or smile; the Mad Titan just stares at him, dark eyes unblinking. Loki rouses himself a little more, manages to prop his shoulders up against the stone. "What do you want?" he finally manages.

"You wish to know what is that which you saw," Thanos tells him, although Loki cannot imagine where he'd gotten that idea, since he was never permitted to ask questions of his own during their sessions and the Chitauri certainly could not have passed it on. "You are one of the few in the universe who could truly understand the events as they unfolded upon Earth, being as you are now the last of the Asgardians."

Loki wonders if he should point out that he is Jotun, not Aesir, but he doubts that Thanos will much care about the distinction. "And?"

Thanos clasps his hands behind his back, stares off into the distance as though the back wall of Loki's cell contains the answers to the mysteries of the universe. "Many years ago, a certain book came to me," he begins, "an ancient tome of Asgard, which had made its way to me through many former owners across the years.

"In there I found descriptions of a creature it called the Destroyer - a bright wyrm bound in the heart of a black hole, which could unmake matter itself. As soon as I read his description, I knew I had to see him in the flesh. An avatar of death and destruction, a cherished servant of my dark Lady - the highest act I could conceive would be to free him from his dark prison and send him to meet his destiny."

That answers a question Loki had long had - how Thanos came to know of Nithhogg in the first place, what had planted the seed that hatched into his lunatic, cataclysmic plan.

But what Loki doesn't understand is what Thanos is doing here, what he hopes to gain by telling Loki this. There is nothing now that he needs from Loki - a prisoner now with no purpose. Could it be that Thanos - the Mad Titan, the destroyer of worlds, the suitor of Death - still has need of an  _audience_? That he desires - if not approval or admiration, at least  _acknowledgement_  of his mighty deeds? With all his victims gone past caring and Lady Death still silent and aloof, who else can Thanos turn to for validation?

Well, far be it from Loki to discourage him from monologuing to his cold heart's content. By such means do fools give their enemies insight into their plans and weaknesses - insight Loki desperately lacks. If he had known more about Thanos before he began his desperate campaign, he would not have - if he had known -

He would have done things differently, to say the least.

"You summoned the Destroyer." It's not really a question, but then, by this point it doesn't need to be. Nithhogg is the only thing Thanos has talked to him about; it doesn't take a genius to realize that unleashing the monster is his intention. "You unleashed Nithhogg upon the Great Tree."

Thanos inclines his head gravely to one side, but does not answer.

"That's  _insane_. " It hisses out past his lips with more force than he intended, years of frustration and bewilderment spewing out of him. "Why? What did you hope to gain from it? There will be nothing left for you,  _nothing_  left after the Unmaker is done. Don't you understand that? Do you imagine that you can  _tame_  such a beast, bend it to your will? You can't,  _no one_  can -"

"It is you who lacks understanding," Thanos interrupts him. He turns slowly and walks over to the small window of Loki's cell, staring out into the deep black of space. "A lesser being such as yourself thinks purely in terms of gain, of goods or food or sex or other such material pleasures that you can heap upon yourselves. You do not understand that some things are so grand and magnificent that they are worth doing for their own sake, monuments to the very meaning of existence. I, Thanos, who have empires aplenty to crawl at my feet - what use have I for your puny homeworld? I who have achieved every other triumph that life can devise, what is left to accomplish? You do not understand the meaning of existence, little giant, until you can write your name in a trail of light across the heavens. To bring an end to so many planets with but one, carefully placed act - if I could pull it off, it would truly be a deed worthy of my Lady."

Loki is shaking, tremors that wrack him from head to toe. "So that's it?" he says in disbelief. "That's your entire motivation, that you just wanted to see if it  _could_  be done? For that you destroyed the Great Tree, nine inhabited realms, twenty billion lives? Just for  _that?"_

"You know nothing of me, little giant, if you think that the idea of killing other living beings is distasteful to me," Thanos says, turning back from the window. "You do not understand the grandeur of destruction, you do not see the  _beauty_  that is death. You do not _see_. You are just like all the others. You see a fundamental part of the cycle of destiny and you think it is bad, evil, just because it inconveniences you."

"And the Chitauri?" Loki licks his lips, dry flesh scraping over raw and chafing skin. "Were they aware that you meant to leave their army to die, once they gained a beachhead for you on Earth? Or did you fail to apprise them of that little detail of your great plan?"

Thanos snorts in disdain, turning away. "They were but drones, the lowest forms of life, with barely a working brain to divide among the lot of them. They must be periodically culled lest they overrun their homeworld. For ones such as they, death in service is the highest form of reward. It is a mark of your lack of sophistication that you insist on seeing death as terrible. Death is the necessary complement of life, and destruction the natural complement of creation. All things that are made must someday be unmade.

"All living things are born pregnant with their own deaths; every cell has an execution order written into its own DNA. Worlds are no different. What you call the Great Tree was born with the avatar of death at its heart, its own demise fated from the beginning. It is futile to resist the natural end of its own cycle."

"There was nothing natural about what you did," Loki spits. "Nithhogg is meant -  _was_  meant to come at the twilight of the universe, at the end of all things. Not unawares, not like this."

Thanos scoffs. "When the end is never in doubt, what point is there to delay? The Unmaker is destruction in in its purest form - killing in a beautiful bloom of light, leaving no messy meat behind to rot and stink up the place afterwards. Magnificent!" he sighs, and Loki realizes with a flinch that there is true emotion on Thanos' face, a look of wonder on his golemish face and a dark shine in his eyes. "Magnificent! To think that the doddering, senile All-Father had the audacity to foil him, to lock him away and prevent him from doing his most sacred duty. The Nine Realms, you call them. The Great Tree, you call it. I call it an escaped fugitive, fleeing from justice. Cowards and vandals, all of them."

Loki feels a spam of rage overtake him. Never in a million years would he think to find himself defending his adopted family, the father who had betrayed him, the brother who had failed him, the home who had rejected him - but to hear the Mad Titan speak of them so contemptuously... he cannot abide it. "Not cowards," he manages to get out, struggling to keep his teeth from chattering. "Some of them were heroes. Mortals perhaps, but even for mortals they were far better men than you."

To Loki's surprise, Thanos shifts his posture and nods in thoughtful agreement. "Indeed," he rumbles. "I met some of these heroes of Earth in my - very brief - sojourn there. What did their courage avail them in the end, I wonder? They fought bravely, they died heroically, and yet still they died. A man dressed in blue and white armor, yet his blood ran as red as any of the men he fought to shield. A man sealed inside a metal suit of armor, throwing himself hopelessly against the odds. But once pried out of that metal shell, his flesh was as soft as any other mortal man's."

Loki's jaw clenches, his insides writhe, trying to crawl inward to hide and disappear from the pain that seeks to stab his heart.  _No,_  he tells himself, promises himself furiously.  _It isn't real. It isn't._

"What strange creatures they are, these heroes," Thanos continues. "How they shine, like bright stars in the murky depths. There is something special about them; perhaps those that dedicate their lives to protecting the lives of others carry the fate of those grateful victims with them forever. That is why they are the most satisfying of all beings to kill. The death of one hero is worth a thousand deaths of everyday men; the snuffing out of their lives is a special event, one that calls the Lady close to collect her souls. Would that I had a hundred heroes to kill, that I might see her every day."

"But you -" and Thanos' sky-dark eyes turn on him, the weight of his stare measuring, judging... condemning. "You are no hero. I can sense it in you. Your hands are stained with the blood of innocents, and yet not one innocent life have you saved.

"Your death will not bring my Lady to me and so to me, you are worthless. You have nothing to offer me any longer, not even the savor of your death. And so death is an honor that shall not be bestowed upon you. I have spoken with your captors to make clear that this is so, that any who grants you the mercy of death will face my wrath. Goodbye, little giant. I leave you to the rest of your miserable existence."

He turns and marches slowly from the cell, which seems to grow three sizes once he is not taking up all the space in it. The door slams behind him, seemingly echoing off into infinity.

Loki lies on the cold rough stone, staring at the ceiling, still numb from the effects of Thanos' presence. It takes him some time to sort through Thanos' monologue about death and destructions, to pull apart the obsessive rationalization from self-serving ego and see the true shape of the mind beneath. It is clear to him now that he can never defeat Thanos by attacking him head-on, and he was a fool to try. He will need to find a way to lure Thanos out from behind his defenses, pull him out of his territory onto neutral ground away from all his servants or allies, the way he did with Laufey.

But what lure would work for such a twisted mind that loves only death? Odin had said that Thanos is mad, and now Loki knows it to be true. Insane, utterly insane, completely divorced from reality, Loki thinks.

Why, the old fool still even thinks that death  _lasts_.

* * *

He stops counting time after that. There seems little point to it. There are no days and nights here. No months and no years. Only today.

(It's always night here.)

His captors grow less interested in him over time. He remains their favored testing grounds for new experiments, for his healing abilities dwarf any of theirs even in this diminished state. He remains their favorite punching bag, too, for the same reason. Half guinea pig, half plaything; in their own way, Loki thinks they have become rather fond of him.

To ensure that he cannot speak words of incantation, his jaw is wired shut. He cannot eat or drink, either, but this does not bother them - if they please to feed him, they can still do so through a tube, a wicked hard needle that goes in his nose and down his throat. Bound on his back with his head strapped down so he cannot fight it, cannot turn away, and they mock and laugh as he coughs and inhales blood and struggles not to vomit for it will have nowhere to go.

He does not fight them, not even in the small ways he has left. He pretends that his hands are more crippled than they truly are, so that they will not bother to bind them. They are more careless with him these days, since the incineration of the Nine. He knows they think him helpless, docile, defeated: his strength crushed, his will broken. They think he is nothing.

But he is not defeated. He is not broken.

He is Loki.

He is waiting.

* * *

On this forsaken chunk of rock there are no days, no months, and no years; yet time grinds on relentlessly nonetheless, as the shattered planet makes its silent way through the great dark. Nothing grows here, nothing moves and so it might seem that nothing changes, but that is not so. Always they are moving forward, even if they seem to be frozen in place.

Loki feels the change in his bones first, locked in his tiny, windowless cell. The Void laps at the edges of all worlds, wherever there is a break or a tear in the natural order of things. Borders, canyons, faultlines... bridges... anywhere a world ends, the Void begins.

The Chitauri homeworld is coming to a point in space where the Void overlaps, where the neutral emptiness of vacuum gives way to the deeper darkness of true nothing. In another few hours, or days, it will pass over the spot and be gone again; Loki knows that he hasn't much time. How strange it feels, for time to once more be something that there is  _not enough_  of.

His captors have grown careless, over the years. They think him broken, crippled, helpless. They do not fear him.

They are fools.

He hears the voices in the corridor outside his cell; over time, with practice, he has come to distinguish one from another. There is one of the worker-scientists, no doubt come to take him to the laboratory again, and two guards. Only two. When they had first brought him here, there had been four guards surrounding him at all times, each of them armed with the agony-inducing neuralizer controls.

The first one through the door is a bulky shambling drone in the shaggy grey garb of the lower classes. He reaches forward to grab Loki by the arm and haul him to his feet, casual and careless, tossing Loki's weight around like a sack of rocks - for a sack of rocks is more likely to fight back than this despised prisoner.

He didn't even bring the neuralizer in with him. Loki would have smiled if he could, if his lips were not bound in place by unyielding wire.

Loki waits until the guard bends over him, upper torso completely open, before he lashes out. He has no weapon, has never been permitted anything that could count as a weapon - but he still has his own blood and bones, and the edge of his hand makes a serviceable blade. Strong enough at least when the target is the guard's soft, vulnerable and unprotected eyes.

Cool liquid bursts over the back of his hand - alien blood and other, less savory fluids - and the guard lets out a bubbling shriek as it rears upwards, hands flying to claw at its face. Loki curls against the stone wall of his cell to brace himself, giving power to the next blow - a savage, brutal jab to the guard's lower thorax. He feels bone plates crunch and give under his hand, stoving in the chest cavity and disrupting the creature's breathing.

The drone topples forward, mewling in pain and writhing as it struggles to breathe or see, unable to do either. Loki seizes it by the back of the neck and turns, using the creature's own momentum against it to ram its head full-speed against the unyielding stone. Stunned, blind and winded, the drone drops to the floor and lies still.

The other two Chitauri stare at him, their saw-toothed mouths hanging agape as they peer through the cell door. Not for as long as he'd like, alas; careless they might have become but the other guard _is_  a warrior. Even as Loki uncoils from the stone and comes to his feet the guard is barrelling forward through the doorway, many-fingered hands grabbing for its weapon. "You will  _suffer_  for this!" it hisses angrily.

For those drones assigned to guard duty, their weapons are blades that are built into the bracers of their armor, specifically so that no enterprising prisoner will be able to grab the weapons and wrestle them away from their captors. That option is closed to Loki, but it also limits his opponent's maneuverability; its reach is barely greater than the length of his arms, and it can only swing at certain angles.

The Chitauri is practiced with its weapon, however, and Loki is unarmed and weakened from his long captivity. His enemy growls roughly and rushes forward, crowding Loki against the wall and trying to use its greater bulk as an advantage. One huge hand grabs at Loki's head, fingers tangling in a fistful of lank hair; the other arm comes up, flexing to bring the blade to full extension and sweeping it towards Loki's face.

There is no room in these hemmed-in quarters for Loki to fall back, to dodge or duck under the blade and come back up under his enemy's guard. So he does the only thing he can do - he blocks with his arm, grabbing the blade with his bare hands to try to force it away from his face.

Sharp metal slices through his skin, blood spills into his palm and runs in a river down his forearm to drip from his elbow. It hurts. But what is pain to him now, after all this time, with freedom so close he can nearly drink it? Uncaring of the wounds on his hand and fingers, Loki manages to force the blade away from his face, up and over his head. For a moment as the guard shifts his weight there is a flash of vulnerability, and Loki drives forward to take the opening.

His years with the Chitauri have not all been in vain; while they studied him, he studied them in turn. He knows where all the gaps are in the armor, and more importantly, he knows where the aliens keep their genitals.

It is not, perhaps, a blow worthy of a warrior. But it is highly effective. The guard doubles over, wheezing and screaming faintly in pain; Loki frees himself from its clutches, ignoring the flash of pain and wave of nausea that comes when a chunk of his scalp separates from his head, bloodstained hair and skin remaining in the guard's tightly-clenched grip. It is nothing. His enemy is  _down_  and that is all that matters.

For a moment all cunning and calculation deserts him, and Loki is overtaken by a berserker rage. One of his tormentors for  _years_ lies prone and helpless on the floor before him and Loki cannot even think, he just strikes out with fists and unshod feet in a savage, furious frenzy. Again and again and again he strikes, and when the red mist clears somewhat from his vision, his hands and feet are black with bruises.

His enemy lies before him, reduced to no more than a lifeless sack of flesh.

Loki hears a sound from behind him and whirls around, suddenly reminded of the third Chitauri that had accompanied the guards - the scientist-worker. It is backing away, fumbling at its belt for something - the forgotten neuralizer, perhaps, or some belated way to call for backup. Loki doesn't give him the chance. He throws himself forward and overwhelms the smaller alien, slamming him to the ground.

Scrabbling fingers close on the creature's baldric and rip it from his chest, the seams of cloth giving way under his hands, and he proceeds to wrap it around his enemy's neck and slowly strangle it to death, while his weight pins the worker helplessly to the floor.

"But why?" the creature's voice bubbles out of its broken throat, gurgling so wet and thick that they would be completely indecipherable if not for the blessings of the All-Tongue. "I was... always... nice... to..."

Maybe he was, Loki thinks as the light slowly goes out of those glistening eyes, as the creature's scrabbling hands and kicking feet die to twitching and then to nothingness. Maybe he was. He can't always tell the technicians apart, in their unmarked clothes and hooded faces, but he dimly recalls that one or two of the scientist-workers were less cruel than the others, that they did not apply the neuralizer quite so liberally, that they did not fasten the restraints so tight as to cut into skin. That perhaps there was an affectionate pat on the head every now and again, like a caress bestowed upon a loyal dog.

But Loki cannot bring himself to care. A lessening of cruelty is not the same as kindness, and he is not so desperate for mercy as to mistake it for such. As far as Loki is concerned they are  _all_ guilty, every single one of them, and so every last one will bear the mark of his hate.

He drops the little technician's corpse on the stone and stands for a moment, breathing heavily and flexing his bleeding hand. A rattling moan from the cell behind him reminds Loki that his first opponent was only incapacitated, not killed; he turns and walks back into the tiny stone cell, the hair raising on the back of his neck as he does.

He grabs the wounded guard's shoulder and hauls it roughly over onto his back, then seizes one weakly flailing arm. A careful manipulation of the bracer and the blade slides out several inches, glittering wickedly. Loki folds the guard's arm across his own chest, the blade resting inwards against his skin; then he stands up, places his foot on the end of the guard's arm for leverage, and stomps down with all of his might. Flesh and bone gives under his feet and blood sprays; there is one high-pitched yelp, and then silence.

Loki's only regret is that it was so soon over, that he did not not have time to teach them the true meaning of pain, that they did not fully appreciate the depth of their transgression in defiling a god. Would that he could show them, slowly and over a matter of days at the least, drinking in the music of their screams as he slowly files away an inch of their bones at a time. Would that he had the time to linger, to show  _all_  of them what it meant to cross the God of Lies... but there is no time.

It wouldn't count now, anyway, not when this timeline is about to be undone. It wouldn't  _stay_. Perhaps later he will come back here, when these filthy wretches are alive once more, and start again. Sometime when he has the proper time, the proper tools. Sometime when their deaths will  _count_.

Until then...

He can feel the time ticking away with every beat of his heart, every pulse of blood that flows out over his hand. There is not much time and much territory still to cover, filled with Chitauri flotsam just like these; if he must fight his way past each and every one of them, he will be overwhelmed.

Fortunately, there is another way - a better way. He can pass among the Chitauri undetected, invisible. And why not? They do.

He drops to his knees beside the largest Chitauri corpse, the only one of a height with him. He opens one hand and winces; trying to do this after years of disuse is like flexing a withered, atrophied muscle. There was a time when this form revolted him, when he hated the monster that lived under his skin, when he dreaded the ice that flowed through his veins. Such concerns seem small and far away now; he has new standards of revulsion. He has new enemies to despise, and new monsters to fear.

Loki  _pushes_  and something inside him gives way, sending a gush of cold out from his heart, down his arm to his hand. A blade of ice forms in his hand. Not large, and not terribly strong, but sharp. Sharp as a razor. It would not cut through Chitauri armor, nor chains nor locks, but it will serve to slide through tender flesh and sinew.

He lowers the blade to the Chitauri corpse, and begins to cut the skin away from the bone.

* * *

The rest of the escape is merely tedious. The larger guard's skin, draped and tucked over his own skin and clothes with the seams hidden carefully under the reconstructed armor, is sticky and binding and foul. But it allows him to move undetected through the Chitauri crowds, a visceral cloak of invisibility. Once upon a time, in another lifetime, the fastidious prince of Asgard might have turned up his nose at such a gruesome solution; but now Loki is only irritated that he must move slowly, carefully so as not to unravel the deception.

He can feel the presence of the Void close, very close. Away from the main colony, the Chitauri's planet grows more shattered, jagged chunks of rock held together by bridges and flights of stairs. If he does not look closely he can almost imagine himself walking the dark paths of the boughs of Yggdrasil, traveling from one safe and familiar world to the next.

Shouts behind him. A cacophony of furious howls as his cell is revealed empty, the bodies uncovered. They will know that he escaped; they will know how he is hiding himself. He doesn't have any more time.

Fortunately, he doesn't need any. Loki breaks into a run, the edges of the skin-suit uncurling and flapping about him as his stride stretches back into its proper shape. The edge of the Void is before him now, a sheer dark cliff vanishing into an engulfing darkness below.

He jumps. Arms spread to catch the current of the ether, eyes closed to drink in the darkness. The Void roars into place about him, and the currents of time begin to unwind. All that he brought with him shivers and curdles, withering into nothing and scattering in the void. The skin. The wires fused to his face. The tracker embedded in his neck, the manacles around his wrists and ankles. All gone, all gone as though they had never been.

Just like he promised himself: it never happened. It is no more than a memory, dim and chaotic and soon to be buried. It was not real, it was not true. He is free.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't ask me for details about why the light from the destruction of Earth reaches wherever Loki and the Chitauri are so quickly. Maybe the Chitauri have a staging area on Titan where Loki is being held, or maybe the Tesseract left a hole in space behind it that the light shines through, IDK. THERE IS PROBABLY A REASON IF I WAVE MY HANDS ENOUGH.


	6. The Ultimate Solution [hope]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki is victorious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, uh, just a general disclaimer: readers should keep in mind that Loki is not 100% the most reliable narrator, and what he thinks of events are not always exactly how they play out. Just because he sees himself as the victim doesn't necessarily mean that he is, is what I'm sayin'.

Perhaps none of this is real. Perhaps it is no more than a fevered hallucination, generated by his mind to entertain him in the endless blackness that is his fall; perhaps these interludes of darkness and nothingness are but brief moments of clarity before he lapses back into delusion.

Perhaps he is dead, and this endless repetition of struggle and failure is to be his afterlife. He's heard that the underworlds of mortals have a penchant for such poetically tailored torments; surely this is punishment for his sins -

(although surely, surely nothing he had done would deserve _this_ )

\- Perhaps he will be here for all eternity.

...perhaps he already has.

* * *

He understands, now. It is not enough to stymie the Chitauri invasion of Earth one time, in the naive hopes that somehow that will deter them forever. What a fragile, shortsighted view that was - to imagine that if only he changes _this one thing_ , everything will magically be all right. Nothing will ever be all right, not so long as the Chitauri and their loathsome master are out there.

They are a stain on the universe, a putrescent plague who live only to destroy, who contribute nothing to the universe but pain and grief. They have no concept of goodness, or mercy, or peace; they will never surrender their apocalyptic devotion, not while but one of them lives.

And so, Loki reasons, they must all die.

All of them.

* * *

He will not, of course, make the mistake of going to the Chitauri homeworld in person again. If his last attempt has taught him anything, it is that courage is a foolish and pointless virtue - a self-righteous luxury available only to those who have no one else to depend on them, who have little to lose if they waste themselves. He should have known better than to risk the Tesseract to Thanos' clutches - or, for that matter, to risk _himself_ ; anyone else can die and it matters not, for they can be alive again in a matter of moments. But there will be no second chances if Loki himself loses his life. If he dies, so too the Nine Realms. Forever. He cannot _allow_ himself the luxury of courage.

And so he will need a way to strike at them from a distance, a way to launch an attack while he and the Tesseract remain protected here on Earth. He needs a weapon. It will not be easy to lay hands on such a thing. Earth has not the technology, and Asgard is closed to him; there are some artifacts in the weapons vault that might serve, but they are out of his reach. Even if he might steal something from the vaults, the All-Father and his minions would hound Loki relentlessly unless he reset time again, and he could not take his prize with him. No, he must start from scratch, build his weapon from the ground up, and Loki has not the talent for building.

Fortunately, he knows who does.

The first step, once again, is to reclaim the Tesseract. He has no more patience for months of stealth and infiltration; yet the months he spent working with Erik Selvig are not in vain, for he knows the Tesseract's movements and locations as well as his own. It is a simple matter to intercept the convoy one night as it is being transported.

There can be no witnesses, that SHIELD and Asgard may not take it upon themselves to interfere. It doesn't surprise Loki that he no longer feels guilt for their deaths (sparing them the horror of Nithhogg's coming)(but Nithhogg _will not_ come this time.)

What _does_ come as a surprise is the _rage_ he feels the first time a confused, panicked guard shoots him. These Midgardian weapons are not powerful enough to take him out with one shot - it is little more than a bruise and a trickle of blood - but even that is enough to awaken a burst of powerful, inexplicable fury that mists his vision red and fills his ears with the roar of the sea. Pitiful mortal wretches how _dare_ they (hurt him tie him down defile him) raise their hand against him? He is Loki of Asgard, he is a _God_ , he is (broken defeated nothing) their _savior_.

When the red mist subsides the guards all lie dead, their lifeless electronic eyes all burnt and shorted out, and an alarm is going off somewhere in the wreck of the vehicle. The Tesseract hums with life and light not too far away; Loki scoops it up in the shielded metal phylactery, tucks it safely away in his pocket dimension, and walks away.

* * *

The next thing Loki does is to go and take a shower, washing the blood from his hands, his arms, his hair. Once that is done, he dresses himself in an impeccably tailored tuxedo, and goes to a party.

It is September 13th. It's a date he knows well, because the first time the seasons had come around to it again, Tony had suddenly begun making a great deal of noise about their "anniversary." Loki had found the entire idea both bemusing and ridiculous - with relationships that span centuries, who has the time to remember one day out of every year? Yet perhaps there is something to the concept, after all, because twenty years later he still remembers the day that he and Tony first met.

How fitting, that this is the day they will first meet again. He has a promise to himself to fulfill, after all: that once he returned from his battle against Thanos, he would have Tony again. (He promised, he _promised_. ) So he smoothes the creases of his suit to sharpness, labors in the mirror to tame his annoyingly unruly hair into submission - and an illusion of smooth skin covers the rest, the dark smudges under his eyes and the little notched scars along his jaw from where the wires attached. Tony does not need to see those, Tony does not need to know.

There are many things that he has no intention of ever letting Tony know.

He drifts through the gala in something of a haze (which, at least, was true to the night as he remembers it;) with all his attention peeled raw for his quarry. When at last he spots him, working his way through the crowd with the dazzling charismatic smile of a consummate showman, Loki is careful not to let his gaze linger too directly, careful not to move too purposefully through the crowd towards him.

If he knows anything about Tony it is that the mortal likes to feel in charge, in control, gets spooked when people come on too strong. There are some things he has done over and over again so many times that they have become routine, habit - but he does not know what changes he can afford before Tony will be put off from approaching him (what if he sees, what if he knows, what if _he doesn't want me any more_ -)

Just to be sure he casts a glamour on himself - nothing too obtrusive, just something to make him seem brighter, sharper to Tony's eyes. The opposite of his "don't notice me" spell that works so effectively to confound the careless mortals, this one shrieks "NOTICE ME" to all but the blindest of eyes.

So he waits at the bar, nursing his drink, until a smaller body slides up on the bar stool next to his, "So," a familiar voice says, dark as chocolate and rich with humor, "did it hurt? When you fell from heaven?"

Loki turns to the side to face him, smiles slowly at his one-time lover. "Oh, Mr. Stark," he purrs. "I never _stopped_ falling."

* * *

The rest of it goes as it did before. Tony still guesses as soon as they enter his building that Loki is not human; this time Loki is ready for it, has a sweet smooth lie all planned out. He is a traveler, he explains, a researcher who journeys from plane to planet, and he wishes to collect knowledge on Earth for a while. Tony never backs down from a challenge, never turns away from a mystery, and a little hint of danger only excites him the more.

And if Loki bites down now on a tanned shoulder harder than he meant - if Loki's nails dragging down Tony's back now draw blood - well, that is no matter. It still makes Tony moan as loudly as before, does it not?

Tony still makes waffles the next morning.

* * *

For a month Loki loses himself in this, lets himself forget... everything. (It was not real. It wasn't real. It wasn't.) The steady march of time, however, eventually asserts itself, and Loki recalls himself to his purpose. He did not seduce the mortal (only) for his own enjoyment; they have worlds to save.

Temptation, not with murmured endearments or caresses that trail fire, but with the promise of knowledge. Loki weaves a cloak of words to ignite a hungry blaze within his lover, of the universe that exists beyond their earthly bounds, of the new vistas that lie just over the horizon. Tells Tony of all the wonders he has seen (carefully edited, of course; honesty is not his friend.) Drops delicate hints about a marvel that Tony might build, modeled after the great treasure of Asgard: a world-gate, a bridge to the stars.

A Bifrost.

Within a week, under Loki's careful direction, Tony has drawn up the first designs. They are rough and clumsy, a hilariously naive attempt to apply concepts that Tony is only just beginning to grasp.

It's a start.

* * *

The glass clock-face glows 2:30 as Loki pads through the hallways of Stark Tower, doors hissing obediently aside for him. Loki is not tired - he sleeps little, these days, and none of it good - but he can usually feign sleep with Tony beside him. But Tony is still somewhere in the lower levels of the tower, and to lose track of him makes Loki restless and anxious.

He finds his lover in the war room, surrounded by half-built parts and prototypes, the walls plastered with blown-up designs of their nascent Bifrost. Tony is in the center of it, his face grey and lined with fatigue but his eyes intent, flickering rapidly from one screen to the next. The cold blue light of the projected displays washes over him, striping him with light and dark and frost and fire.

Loki comes up behind him, his footfalls silent as a cat's, and slides his hands onto Tony's shoulder. Tony starts and jumps at the unexpected contact, but Loki holds him down easily enough with a squeeze of his hands. "What are you doing out of bed so late?" he breathes in Tony's ear. "Late-night inspiration?"

"Uh, something like that, I guess," Tony says with a nervous chuckle, slowly relaxing under Loki's touch. He reaches forward and flicks through a couple more electronic screens. He has a view of the power conduits up in front of him, blown up and pulled apart, and a cascade of numbers in green and red pour down the side of the design. "Something about this part was nagging at me. I wanted to come down and take a look."

"Mm," Loki says, and he narrows his eyes at the screen. "What?"

"Well, I can't know for sure until we actually _build_ it," Tony says, "but it bothers me that there aren't any upper bounds on this oscillation cycle. There's a lot of power feeding into it, but it's not really being grounded anywhere - if something went wrong, it's theoretically possible that it could build up a high-frequency resonance arc that could spill over to physically damage to the target location."

"And this is a problem?" Loki asks, voice indifferent. He is very careful to hide his internal alarm, his sudden annoyance at Tony's perceptiveness. _You fool, that is exactly the point,_ he snarls inside, but does not say.

"Well, _yeah,"_ Tony says with a roll of his eyes. "I mean, it's not exactly good practice to introduce yourself to a new world by setting up a Richter Eight seismic event at the landing point. Seems like it wouldn't make a good impression on our allies."

"Hmph," Loki snorts quietly. "You worry too much. I told you, Asgard has been using precisely this design for thousands of years, and they haven't managed to blow up a single planet with it yet." _Technically true._

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Tony says with a little shrug, but he reaches forward and flicks through the display again. "You're the stupidly advanced alien, I know, and I'm just the tech guy. But I'm an engineer, I can't help it. I build failsafes and triple-redundant switchbreaks in everything. It's just how I am."

Loki says nothing, but slides his hands forward under Tony's loose t-shirt, seeking the tender places of his skin. Places open-mouthed kisses down along the side of Tony's neck, breathing on the skin in just such a way that he knows will turn Tony into putty in his hands. Sure enough a harsh shiver passes up Tony's backbone, and he groans. "What are you doing?" he asks, voice rough.

"You work far too hard," Loki murmurs, laving the shell of Tony's ear with his lips. "And worry far too much. Let it be. Come to bed."

_"Damn_ you're good at that," Tony mutters. "It's not freaking fair, you have centuries of experience. How do you always know just how to drive me wild?"

Out of Tony's sight Loki allows himself one sharp smile, cold and glittering as a scimitar. He knows.

And later tonight or perhaps tomorrow, while Tony sleeps, Loki will sneak down here and undo the changes Tony has made to the design, disguise and obfuscate and direct his attention elsewhere.

What Tony doesn't know won't hurt him.

* * *

wires

dark in the wires

wires burning glowing wriggling moving crawling _fear_

wires in the dark far away growing pulsing devouring nothing nothing loss pain _grief_

coming closer wires

eating burning glowing hurting burrowing sharp sharp hot hurting _pain_

they are coming closer standing over on his back looking upwards dark sky stone ceiling bright lights hot hot hurting blind draping cowls mouths full of saw teeth hissing laughing smiling hurting screaming _hate_

he fights and fights and struggles but it is no good, he is not strong enough, he cannot get free of them no matter how he tries, they have him tied down and bound in place with wires when he screams it only makes them laugh more and continue what they're doing pumping him full of poison just to see how he'll react, how fast his system can burn it out, how fast he can heal, what makes him sleepy what makes him sick what makes everything sharper brighter louder faster fighting harder _break_ _free_

and now he is free he got free but he left his hands behind, they pulled off the ends of his arms like a leaf breaking off a stem, no blood no hands, he remembers how to change his shape and he is flying he is himself but he is flying, safe and free above everything.

below him an ocean of blood, the sky on fire, the water boiling, the ground crumbling as Nithhogg's bulk heaves along the horizon, and the ocean is full of people they look up at him and cry for him to help them but he can't he can't he can't because he has no hands -

_Not one innocent life have you saved._

it's jan below him she's bobbing on the waves crying for help reaching for him he tried to save her he tried he tried he tried but now _he can't find her,_ she's gone she's gone she's nowhere and he's so afraid, so afraid -

_Not one innocent life have you saved,_ Loki.

Movement over him, hands reaching out, saw-toothed mouths and grotesque smiles, _no_ , he is not helpless he is not nothing he will not let them -

Loki. Hey, Loki. Are you okay?

\- grab his arms and drag him back, drag him down, and he will not he will not never again he won't let them no _no_ _ **NO**_

His whole body spasms as though hit with a shock, with another dose of the drug, and abruptly he can move again and he lashes out - his hands are back they move they obey him they close over yielding flesh - and Loki hurls his attacker across the room to slam into the wooden paneling with a resounding _crash_.

Wait...

Paneling?

"Holy shit, Loki!"

He is panting, blinking stars out of his vision, arm still outstretched from where he flung - Tony? - yes, it's just Tony, nothing else, nothing worse, not the Chitauri, not _him_. It's just his lover, his weak and safe and harmless mortal lover, whom he's just grabbed by the neck and thrown against the wall.

His pulse beats wildly, his hands shake - pent up energy, crackling up and down his nerves with nowhere to go. Every little movement turns threatens to turn into a wild lunge; he pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, trying to bottle himself up, to keep from spilling over. "Don't come near me," Loki hisses.

Tony is on the other side of the room, gingerly manipulating his injured arm with his good one. "You couldn't pay me to!" he retorts. "What the hell was that about?"

"I was asleep!" Loki snaps. "Why did you bother me?"

"Why did I -" Tony breaks off, looking incredulous. "You were obviously having a nightmare! I was trying to snap you out of it."

"No! No I wasn't," Loki says, denial immediate and vehement. If he admits it was a nightmare he admits (to being weak, so weak, failure) (that something happened and nothing happened he made sure of that he undid it it never happened) that there are things he is keeping from his lover. "I'm fine. It was nothing."

"Oh yeah? If it's so 'nothing,' then why the hell did you throw me across the room?" Tony demands.

"It's not my fault," Loki says. He is wound tight as a wire, every beat of his heart hammering with anger-fear anger-fear... is it dread or fury that fills him to breaking? Anger, surely it must be anger that he feels, because there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing. "You bothered me while I was asleep. You did. You made me do it - it's your fault."

Tony's head jerks back, an expression of hurt passing over his face before it is replaced with an outraged scowl. "The fuck, when did this become my fault?" he demands. "Hello, I'm the one with the cracked shoulder over here!"

"Oh, stop being such a baby," Loki sneers. The words rise easily to his lips, well-practiced after centuries of being on the receiving end of them - from trainers, from peers, from Thor. "It's barely a bump. Aren't you supposed to be the great superhero? How can you expect to fight evil if you can't take a little tumble?"

Tony sputters. "What the - I don't normally expect to fight evil in my bedroom! " he says angrily, standing up and cradling his elbow in his good hand. The side of his face that impacted the wall is reddening and swelling, and a small cut on his cheekbone oozes a few drops of red.

In short, angry motions Tony grabs a pair of loose pants from the bedroom floor and yanks them up around his hips one-handed. A pair of beat-up house shoes follow, and a thread of cold anxiety begins to work its way through Loki's anger(panic) anger. "Where are you going?" Loki demands.

Tony heads for the bedroom door, turning for only an instant to throw a scowl over his shoulder at Loki." "Somewhere in my own house where I can sleep in peace," he calls, "without being beat up by a fucked-up alien who can't even admit to his adjustment issues!"

He slams the door behind him, leaving Loki alone with the dark, the cold, and the last echoes of the dream.

* * *

He's waiting on the couch in the living room of his lover's floor when Tony gets in. The sun is setting, but Loki hasn't turned on any of the lights, leaving him half in shadow as the light blares across the wall behind him.

"I haven't seen you around for a few days," Tony says, wariness evident in his voice and his posture. He takes off his jacket and folds it over his arm, tugging loose the collar. Loki watches the light play across his features as he moves uneasily around the room, making a reflexive beeline for the bar. It's what he always does when he's nervous or unsure, something to keep his hands and eyes occupied as he thinks. Loki's soft voice stops him before he can reach for a glass.

It's been a week since Loki's nightmare, since he last slept, since he and Tony argued. In the silence of the days that followed Loki had plenty of time to contemplate the prospect of losing Tony, losing all they have built together, losing his only chance to build the Bifrost, and he has concluded that the risk is unacceptable. He cannot let Tony leave him. He cannot let anyone else take Tony from him. The fate of the Nine Realms depends on it.

"I have been thinking," is all he says.

Tony immediately goes tense, his hand stiffening mid-reach, before he very deliberately completes the movement. "Oh? Bout what?" he says. From the sound of it, he's half-convinced already that Loki plans to leave him, to end their relationship on the spot.

If only Tony knew. If only he had any idea how desperate Loki is, how much he _needs_ Tony, not just for himself but for his plans to succeed. If only he knew how (not afraid, there is nothing to fear) concerned Loki is that Tony will leave _him_ , cast him aside like he did in the cell that terrible day. If only he knew -

Then perhaps he'd understand why Loki must do this.

"About balance," Loki says, keeping his voice quiet, soft. "About how two people cannot be together if one is only taking while the other gives. I have asked much of you, Tony Stark, and given little in return."

Tony snorts, splashing a golden-colored liquid into a tumbler and putting the glass bottle back under the bar with a clank. "Yeah, well, I'm Tony Stark, it's understandably hard to give gifts," he says, and some of the tension has gone out of him. He fetches the two glasses and comes around the bar, strolling towards the couch where Loki still sits. "I mean what can you give to the genius billionaire philanthropist superhero, the guy who has it all?"

"Time."

With a fluid motion of his hands Loki reaches into his dimensional pocket, the one where he stores the Casket, the Tesseract. Instead, though, he plucks a round, fist-sized object from beside them, and pulls it out into the world.

It is an apple, and its bright golden skin catches the last bar of sunlight like a flame. Tony glances at it then does a double-take, staring.

"In the sacred garden at the heart at Asgard, the goddess Ithunn tends to her grove," Loki explains, turning the apple this way and that. Its shape is perfectly symmetrical, its skin flawlessly smooth and radiant. "She grows apples, you see; miraculous apples, that grant the Aesir their youth and vitality. It is forbidden to take these apples out of Asgard, of course. But I've never really been one for rules.

"Some time ago, I did a substantial favor for Ithunn - rescued her from the company of some disagreeable giants who thought to capture their magic for themselves." Loki smiles, a mixture of timid shyness and unrepentant mischief. "Ever since then, I've known of a secret way into Ithunn's garden that no one else knows about."

Tony's eyes are huge, his face open with shock and wonder. "Are you seriously offering me..." He reaches out to the apple, then hesitates, his hand jerking back in mid-air. "Shit. I don't - I don't know what to say."

"Please don't feel a sense of obligation, Tony," Loki hurries to say. _(Oh yes, please do.)_ "A mind as brilliant as yours, a soul as brave as yours, comes along only once in a millennia. It is criminal that yours would be limited to only one mortal lifetime. You deserve more time." He lowers the apple between them, opens his hand to balance it flat on his hand in invitation. "I wish to give it to you."

Tony looks up to meet his eyes, and Loki holds them for a long, solemn moment. At last, Tony's gaze drops to the apple in his hand; slowly, hesitantly, he reaches forward to take it. The crunch as his teeth break the skin is clearly audible in the breathless quiet, and Loki smiles.

To give the apples of immortality to a mortal is an immense honor - and in a way, a gesture of trust, since it places mankind on a level with the gods. It's a gift that demands equal trust and honor in return, and that is exactly what Loki is counting on.

It's not _all_ a lie. The golden apples of Ithunn do exist, and contribute greatly to the stamina and longevity of the Aesir (although not to the extent that they would fall as low as mortals without them, of course.) And Loki had indeed rescued Ithunn from the giants a long time ago (leaving aside the little fact that he had been responsible for her being kidnapped in the first place) and does indeed know a secret way into the grove of golden apples.

It's merely that these particular apples aren't them. They were appropriated from a local farmer's market, with a few spells cast to glorify their appearance and taste. For the better, really, since Ithunn's apples are lethally toxic to all Earth-based species. (A pity, that.)

But what Tony doesn't know won't hurt him.

And what Tony doesn't know won't hurt Loki, either.

* * *

A year after he meets Tony again (for the first time) at the party, the prototype Bifrost is complete.

It's not _done,_ of course. Not nearly done. It's still barely a skeleton, bare and unpolished, its innards exposed to the world in an ungainly and fragile fashion. Before they can announce its existence to anyone else they'll need to run a lot more tests, to make sure that it falls within spec, that it can perform admirably without overloading or causing any kind of damage to its target. Tony talks optimistically about demos, patents, going into production. Has pestered Loki with questions about Asgard, about the Realms, about what planet they should experiment with first.

But it's complete.

The gate itself is in the form of a ring of metal, eight feet tall and the same across, set upright at the end of a long railway of metal. It had been Tony's design (he'd said something about how 'stargate atlantis was the only decent one' and Loki hadn't pursued the matter.) Large metal struts hold the frame upright and brace it in position, and a rat's nest of cables emerge from points around the circle to slither off into hulking banks of equipment cluttering the walls.

It's beautiful.

Unlike the Bifrost of Asgard, their gateway is a hybrid of Aesir and mortal magic. The Bifrost had no screens or keyboards or displays to interact with; all of its functions were built into the very walls, lacquered over with gold, hidden and forgotten. Here, the painstaking months of planning and construction and improvisation and jury-rigging and curses, sweat and blood are out in the open, plain to see. In a sense, it is his and Tony's child.

The power unit is still sitting freestand on the floor of the workshop, attached to the gateway only by a long series of looping cables. Loki forces open the casing to the power supply; the blue hum of an arc reactor greets him. With a delicate touch he disconnects the miniature reactor, lifts it from its housing, and sets it aside. Tony Stark's legendary arc reactors are impressive, for mortal magic, but they do not have the power Loki needs for this next task.

He draws the Tesseract from his dimensional pocket, exposing it to the air for the first time in over a year; it sings with joy to be free once more. He turns it carefully over in its hand, then slots it down into the socket. It slides home with a solid _click_ that feels almost viscerally right, and for a moment Loki stares. The face of the Tesseract is square, and the reactor socket was hexagonal; how could the Tesseract possibly fit so smoothly?

But then, he knows the Tesseract is not really a cube; that is only how it appears to their limited perceptions. Like so many other powerful artifacts, the Tesseract has a semi-consciousness of its own; perhaps it wants to do this as much as he does. Loki decides to take it as a sign.

He drags the half-ton power unit across the floor, carefully deploying cables as he goes, until it is positioned in front of the gateway. This part will be tricky; he will need to use the Tesseract for two functions at once, drawing on it for a power source while he simultaneously uses it to light the way to his target. But he knows every bolt of this machine, he helped build it, and the systems respond as well to Loki's magic as they do to Tony's computers.

Loki walks back over to the gateway's control panel, steps up onto the platform, and punches in the start-up sequence. The gateway roars to life, surging with more power than it has ever known before; but Loki oversaw its specifications, he labored over every inch of the fittings and connections, and he knows that it can take it. He grips the padded rails that lead into the heart of the stargate, and pulls with mind and magic together.

The gateway spins up, brilliant multicolored light seething across the formerly blank space inside the ring. The Tesseract roars to life, wrenching open a passage of space between here and there, and the New York skyline is blacked out behind a wheeling vista of darkness and stars.

Tony's screens and displays are helpful, here, putting numbers and coordinates and axes of direction onto that vast empty gulf. They are currently viewing a spectroscopic binary star in the constellation Taurus, 268 lightyears from Earth. Blue-white B-type main sequence dwarf with an apparent magnitude of +5.38 and a magnitude +7.6 yellow G-type main sequence dwarf located 19 arcseconds from the primary. System landmarks are a thick Oort cloud, a large cold gas giant lurking about the fringes, an especially thick asteroid field scattered about the interior giving testimony to an especially violent cosmic history in the area. One shattered planet, barely holding itself together through the long habit of gravity, drifting through space. Inhabited.

The Chitauri homeworld.

It is strange; from this distance he can hardly recognize that broken, barren world. From this distance the fleet of warships appear as tiny glinting specks. The Chitauri's great cities are no more than crawling grey lichen upon the face of the planet, with fine lines branching out over the empty distances; imposing mountain ranges are no more than wrinkles.

Thanos' great citadel, from this distance, is no more than a child's toy, a peaked and pointed miniature inside a drop of glowing molten red.

Loki adjusts everything carefully, positions it painstakingly, using the computers to help him execute precise adjustments of millimeters that translate to kilometers on the other side of that long gap. At last, though, he has everything perfectly in place - the Tesseract singing with anticipation of making the connection across space, the gateway roaring with hurricane potential.

And then Loki activates the Bifrost.

A cascade of light pours across the universe, a thundering song of power and destruction. Properly managed it would touch upon the surface, deposit its burden, and then subside. Left to run wild, it will become a cataclysm of destruction, a symphony of shattering rock and boiling atmosphere.

Loki lets it run wild.

He rides the maelstrom of power, directing it here and there but otherwise doing nothing but to let it run its course. He wonders if this is how his brother feels when he calls the thunder, directs lightning to strike and rain to flood at his command; yet even Thor has never called up a storm that can rend the very heavens themselves and he, Loki, has. Twice now, he has.

There is exhilaration in this and there is terror, but most of all there is savage satisfaction. At last the apocalypse the Chitauri visited upon his homeworld can be returned. At last they will know how it feels, to watch their world crumble about them, to know the horror and fear and desolation of utter helplessness. Now they, too, will know what it is to be ruined.

For a very, very short time they will know it.

Loki wasn't sure how long it would take the Bifrost to do its catastrophic work, but already the Chitauri world is beginning to crumble under his ministrations. Perhaps the power of his young stargate is wilder, harsher than the Bifrost, which after all was never _intended_ as a weapon of mass destruction; or perhaps the Chitauri's planet is so close to shattering to begin with that it doesn't take much to complete the work.

Either way, it is only about twenty minutes before the structure of the planet buckles and collapses, enveloped in an atmosphere of flame. Loki turns the lens of the Bifrost elsewhere, methodically drilling the beam from one Chitauri base across the asteroid belt to another, leaving no refuge behind. He learned much of the Chitauri's world while he was there, to the extent of knowing where all their colonies and shipyards are located, and he burns them out one by one. It is not even vengeance that drives him now, but only prudence; the only thing more dangerous than making a great strike against an enemy is leaving his heirs behind to revenge themselves upon you.

At this distance and in such a conflagration, Loki cannot see individual structures fall, cannot see any single being's reaction to the assault, but there was no time for them to mount any kind of an evacuation. They would not have had reason to expect such an assault out of nowhere, would not have been given a moment to recoup and respond. The only one in the entire star system who would be astute enough to comprehend such an assault, the only one who would have the resources to activate one of the many escape plans he no doubt had lying in wait - the only one who could possibly have survived such a holocaust is Thanos.

But Thanos, if he still lives, is homeless and powerless, for now. He is stripped of his army and his allies. It will take him some time to rebuild, and in the meantime he will be much distracted from his egomaniacal plans of annihilation. If he seeks revenge, it will not be soon. Perhaps he can even be tempted to come to Earth in person, out from behind all his defenses and strongholds, where the heroes of Earth can (perhaps) deal with him.

That is a thought for another day, though. This day's work is done.

Loki shuts off the gateway, lets the deep roar subside to a low hum, lets the multicolored blaze flicker and die down. The sudden quiet seems deafening in contrast, ringing in his ears like a cacophony of bells.

It's done.

He leans forward, resting his forehead against the cool metal frame of the control panel, and takes a gasping breath that almost feels like a sob. Catches it in his throat, wrestles it into submission, and lets go a long, steady exhale.

It's over.

He's _won._

The Chitauri are no longer a threat to Midgard. They are no longer a threat to anyone. Thanos or no, there will be no invasion now. No summoning sigil dug deep into the earth and filled with blood. No portal to the underworld, no invocation of Nithhogg. The Tree will not die. Asgard will not fall. The Realms are safe.

He had no thoughts for what to do past this point; all his thoughts and plans focused obsessively on this one moment of triumph. For a long moment he teeters uncertainly between past and future, groping tentatively towards thoughts of days that he has not lived before. Perhaps - perhaps...

"Oh my God."

The voice comes from behind him, and Loki whirls around.

Tony stands in the back of the room - when had he come in, how had Loki not heard him? He is half in the shadows, completely motionless but for the rise and fall of the glimmer on his chest. His eyes are locked on the computer screens, words and numbers and bright flashes reflecting in the dark wet shine.

"You killed them. You actually just killed a whole planet. That's - that's not just murder, that's genocide." Tony hesitates, then lets out a ghastly laugh. "Y'know, here on Earth we call it genocide if you just _try_ to wipe out a whole race of people, but you - you actually did it."

"It was necessary," Loki says guardedly. After so many years of secrets, silence and hiding, it's hard to unlock his tongue enough to explain - even now, even now that the threat is gone forever. "They would have attacked Earth. That is not only speculation, it is fact. They _would_ have invaded, in such numbers as to overwhelm your mortal forces -"

"Then we would have dealt with it when they did!" Tony snaps in response. "In case you hadn't noticed, we Earthlings, kind of all about the fighting and retaliating against hostile threats thing. But for god's sake, not by _pre-emptively wiping out their entire solar system!"_

"You would not have _dealt with it!"_ Loki snaps back, temper rising as he is provoked. "You are completely incapable of defending yourselves. Your mortal technology is far too primitive, your armies and heroes are far too weak. They would have overrun you in a matter of days!"

"Uh yeah, that was _my_ 'primitive technology' that just blew up a planet, thanks," Tony interrupts, voice heavy and stinging with sarcasm. "So clearly we're not as pathetic and incapable as you seem to think."

"Yes, a device that you could only build with my guidance," Loki counters. Why is Tony being so _unreasonable?_ "Tony - let me explain. There is more going on here than you know. This isn't the first time - "

"That's the Tesseract," Tony cuts him off, in a tone of dawning horror. "You had it all this time - you were the one whole stole it from SHIELD. Eight agents died in that theft and they were never able to figure out who - _you_ did that. What the hell _are_ you?"

Loki begins to feel uneasy, defensive. He gropes for a convenient lie: perhaps he should say that it was the Chitauri spy who stole the Tesseract, and he merely reclaimed it later? Yes, that is good, then maybe he can make Tony take the threat of the Chitauri seriously, maybe he will truly understand the fate that Loki has just averted. "Tony, listen to me - "

"I knew something was off about you from the beginning, you know?" Tony cuts him off, talking right over him like he isn't there. Or isn't speaking. Or isn't a person. "Something a little too... controlled, a little too hungry. But I told myself it was nothing. I told myself, an alien prince wouldn't need my money. So you couldn't be after that. I thought, maybe I'd finally found someone who liked me for _me_. "

"I did," Loki says. "I do. I - I _needed_ you, Tony, there are none others like you - I needed you for your brilliance, your talents -"

"Wow, really?" Tony interrupts. "Because if this is an attempt at flattery, it's really, really, _really_ not helping right now."

"I wanted you. I needed you," Loki insists. "But - I also needed your craftsmanship."

"My tech," Tony says. "That's what this was all about. You wanted my tech. God, and I thought Natalie Rushman was cold. All this time you were just using it, using _me_ , to build _weapons_ again. After all this time I swore I'd never build a weapon again, and you - you just murdered half a million sapient beings. With _my tech_. "

"You have no idea what outcome I just prevented," Loki says, a dark quiet undercurrent beginning to build in his voice. Perhaps Tony does have a right to be angry at him, for the deception - and what else can one expect, from the god of lies? When the truth has never wrought him anything but more pain - but - "You have no idea what they would have gone on to do -"

"No! I don't know, and neither do you!" Tony shouts, the thin veneer of mania vanishing in the furnace of rage. "They could have done anything, and you just wiped that out - any possibility of meeting in peace, of an accord, you just - obliterated their whole _future_! And you don't even have the grace to look a little sorry about it!"

"Sorry?" Loki hisses, anger going cold under his skin. "Why in Hel's name should I be sorry? I did this for _you_. All of you! You puerile wretch, I saved your life and that of all your worthless _planet_ , and _this_ is how you thank me?"

"Thank you? _Thank_ you?" Tony shouts. "For dragging an alien grudgematch down to earth and then using _me_ like a 24-hour rent-a-nuke to dispatch them for you? Because you're not brave enough to face them head-on, or not clever enough to invent your own weapons? What exactly am I supposed to be thanking you for?"

A lifetime of insults - _coward, weakling, parasite_ \- a lifetime of slights, dismissals of all his strengths and accomplishments - _some do battle, others just do tricks -_ boils in Loki's vision now, and he tastes rage. "You know _nothing_ \- nothing about what I have done, what I have borne, to see this day - you should be kneeling at my feel, showering me with gratitude -"

"I can't believe I let you in my life," Tony stares at his hands in horror, as if they have suddenly become strangers to him. "I can't believe I let you in my Tower. I can't believe I let you touch my stuff - I can't believe I let you touch _me_ , I can't believe I touched _you_. "

How dare he, how _dare_ he look at Loki like this, the same way he looks at his hands, like he's something scraped off the bottom of a shoe. How _dare_ he look at Loki like all the others.

"Kinda funny, isn't it? All this time I've been fighting against monsters, and I had no idea that the monster was already in my own - "

Loki's hand moves almost of its own volition, his fist clenching in red rage as blood-red tendrils of magic seep from between his fingers. His arm comes up and he hurls it at Tony, all his bitter pain, all his frustration and betrayal. Tony's head jerks back, and his eyes go wide - his hands fly up between them, and a burst of white-blue light fires from the center of his palms. His gauntlet, he was wearing his gauntlet when he came in - and when did he start doing that, when did he start wearing the bracelets that would allow him to call his armor every time he was in a room with Loki, until Loki stopped even noticing? -

Energy meets energy, and the incompatibility results in a violent explosion that flings the both of them back and fills the room with the smell of burnt carrion. Loki recovers first - Tony is but a mortal, of course - but he hasn't even decided which direction to _move_ before Tony's quiet words cut through the stinking haze.

"Get out," Tony says, all at once the flames gone in an icy cold. He stares at Loki, and it is like the stranger-look that haunts his dreams all over again, but a hundred times worse - for while there had been indifference, and it had twisted in his gut like a knife, never before has he seen this rage, this contempt, this _disgust_. "Get out of my house. Get out of my life. If you ever show your face in this tower again, I swear to God I will put you through the window."

For a long moment Loki does not move - _cannot_ move, every muscle locked and frozen in place - but when Tony takes a step towards him, Loki jerks himself into motion. Turns in half-a-circle and steps forward into mist, blindly teleporting himself away, away, anywhere.

* * *

Loki finds himself standing in the streets of New York City, garish lights flickering and writhing all around him, surrounded by the cacophony of the city life. A car jerks to a stop inches away from him, and the driver lays on a blast of the horn mere feet away from Loki's face.

Rage bubbles up through him and Loki's hands shoot out and grab the edge of the car, hefting it up as effortlessly as if the half-ton of metal and plastic were no more than driftwood.

"I did this for _you!"_ he screams to the city at large, the uncaring, ignorant mortals, and flings the car away from him; it rolls over and skids to a stop half on its side against the curb. The outburst begins to turn heads, draw attention, and the clamor only rises as people begin to shout and scream upon seeing him. As he strides forward they flee before him, and it is satisfying even as it fans his rage even higher. Why do they run from him? Why? Don't they realize that he is their _savior?_

He reaches a glass storefront and puts his fist through it; the glass shatters and crashes most satisfyingly around him. He goes down the row of shops in this manner, smashing everything that he can reach: glass plates, metal grates, brick walls. By the time he reaches the corner, sirens are wailing and the frightened humans have cleared the way for the police cars that come weaving through the streets towards him.

He has no patience for dealing with them tonight. He makes a gesture, and teleports away before they are close enough to even lay eyes on him.

Loki finds himself outside a familiar-looking brownstone building - the apartment he once had to himself, so many worlds ago, before his path ever crossed with Tony Stark's. He blazes up the stairwell and yanks the front door open, heedless of the locks and bolts that swing uselessly from its splintered edge.

Of course, this apartment is not _his_ any more (never was,) and the mortal who lives here is just scrambling to his feet with his mouth open in outrage, reaching behind a case for some crude weapon. Loki sets a vision in front of his eyes that sends him screaming into the darkness, clawing at his face; it will last till morning, if Loki is feeling generous enough to remove it by then.

The familiar-but-not outline of the apartment does nothing to soothe Loki's nerves; he paces and seethes and fumes, worrying over his bitterness and rage like a bird of prey mantling a kill. Always, it is _always_ like this; others get naught but praise for their piddling acts of aggression and brashness, but let Loki - let Loki move the heavens to prevent a war, prevent a tragedy, prevent the _end of the world,_ and they call him - and they call him -

_Monster._

Every light in the apartment surges to a bright white, then blows their circuits all at once; shouts and curses from far off to either side of him suggests that the power to the whole building has gone. Let them curse, let them all fester and rot in the darkness. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He doesn't.

Loki crouches in the darkness, in the middle of the floor, and grinds his hands into his eyes until he can see naught but the auroras.

What had he expected? What did he think would happen, when he at last solved this horrific riddle and averted the catastrophe he had tried so many times, failed so many times, to quell? Had he expected _praise?_ Did he really think that the heavens would open, that Odin and Thor would come down and congratulate himself for his heroics, assure him that at last he was worthy?

Did he really think that everything would just return to the way it was in that lost, distant time - that he could walk back into Avengers Mansion to the friendly hails of his teammates? That he would wake in the morning entwined in Tony's arms and the past twenty-two years would be naught but a bad dream? That everything would be fine, everyone would be alive and happy and together and have cake?

Did he really think there would be no _consequences?_

It doesn't have to be this way, of course. Loki can always return to the Void, his sweetest lover, and start again. Reset time again, do the whole thing over. Tony will forget everything - all the lies, all the recriminations and betrayals - and they can start again. Next time he will be more careful, lie better, cover his tracks more thoroughly. Next time, Tony need never know...

Except - this is the first time, the _first_ time he has ever been able to succeed. In every other timeline he has failed, again and again, until a cold poison seed in his heart doubted that he ever _could_ succeed. In this incarnation alone has he been able to best Thanos, to destroy the Chitauri and spare the fate of the billions of lives that reside in the Great Tree.

Is he really willing to risk that, to risk, _everything,_ just so that Tony won't be mad at him any more?

Perhaps it says more than anything else about Loki's heart, his sick shameful weakened heart, that it takes him a long time to find the answer to that question.

_No._

It isn't worth it. To have Tony, to have comfort and love and acceptance - it isn't worth the fate of the Nine Realms. In this timeline alone there have been no thefts, no deaths, no destruction (save for the Chitauri, of course.) If his relationship with Tony is the price for such a bloodless resolution, then it is more than worth that price. It is the ransom he must pay for the life of Yggdrasil.

And Loki knows that, even as he wraps his arms around himself and rocks back and forth on the gray industrial carpeting of his dark and silent apartment. Wet and cold stains his face, and it takes Loki a long time to realize where it's coming from.

Tears. Why are there tears? He has triumphed. He is a hero, even if no one else will ever know. He has _won._

There is no more reason to weep.

He has no reason to feel despair.

* * *

The next night, Tony Stark destroys the prototype.

Loki can feel it die from halfway across the city, for while it was a half-finished thing of steel and wires, it was still also a thing of magic. Loki's own magic, threaded between the circuits to bind them together; and while the bifrost was nowhere near as powerful as something like the Tesseract or the Casket, it is alive enough that Loki can hear it shriek as it dies.

He supposes he should have seen this coming, known that Tony Stark would not countenance its continued existence for long. Stark has always been strict and severe on the topic of weapons, and this one reminds him too much of Loki, too much of the lies and betrayals. Its destruction is symbolic, Loki supposes, or perhaps some kind of misplaced penance for the slain Chitauri.

He should have seen something like this coming, but it still is a devastating wasteful loss, because their infant Bifrost was so much more than a weapon. Destruction might be the purpose for which Loki had it built, but it was not its only purpose, not even its main purpose. It was still a bridge to the stars, a gateway between their world and Asgard and any other world they choose to name, and it could have done so much for the humans and their world. It could still have done everything that Loki promised to Tony: bring new vistas of knowledge to their world, new prosperity, new hope. It could still have been Loki's gift to Tony, his apology for the necessity of using him as Loki did.

Loki supposes he isn't surprised that Tony destroyed the bridge, but it still breaks his heart.

* * *

In the days that follow Loki slowly begins to adjust to the new chapter of his life. If he will be truthful with even himself, he isn't quite sure what to do next. In this timeline there are no Avengers; without his prompting they have not formed, and Tony's vitriolic words in their ear will no doubt turn them away from him should he try.

But neither does he have any intention of returning to Asgard, there to face the blind thoughtless judgment of his so-called father for crimes twenty five worlds and twenty years stale. He has no need to hide himself from them any longer, but he will never return, for that golden realm is home to him no longer.

So he begins his new life on Midgard, aimless and drifting, with a thought to returning to his old plots and plans from so long ago, before Tony Stark had ever stumbled into his life. He will make connections and allies, acquire money and power, give himself a worth that no one can ignore.

In the meantime he helps himself to what meager luxuries Midgard can provide; since their entire world would be rapidly cooling dust in the cold void of space if not for him, Loki reasons, the very least they can offer in recompense is a few trinkets and simple creature comforts. Human money is easy to conjure, human minds easy to enthrall into believing that payment has already been made; or, should these methods not prove practical, he can always simply summon what he desires to him. It's a simple enough matter, and harms no one.

Or so he thinks, at least; until one day, a handful of weeks after the firing of the Bifrost, his barely-forming routine is disrupted. He is sitting in an upscale restaurant with a fine view over the city, calmly eating a meal valued at two hundred dollars a plate, when a sudden tumult over by the elevators shatters the peace and quiet. Loki glances up, not pausing in his chewing, to see a familiar red-gold-suited figure (who still makes his heart jump) ( _doesn't)_ appear through the crowd and stride over towards him. At first he wonders if it's just a coincidence that Tony is here tonight - perhaps he has some other business at this restaurant - but no, Tony strides right through the crowd towards him and stops beside his table.

"Funny meeting you in a place like this, Loki," Tony says loudly, playing to the crowd as always. "This restaurant doesn't usually cater to the _criminal_ class. So what have you been up to, anyway? Blown up any planets lately?"

Loki sighs, bringing his napkin up to blot his lips, then sets it aside. "What are you doing here, Stark?" he asks.

"Oh, it was easy to find you," Tony says with a smirk. "Your features are pretty distinctive. It was just a matter of setting up a face-recognition program and setting it to scan the commonly used camera wavelengths in public places. Once you came out in the open, it didn't really take long to spot you."

"How wonderful for you," Loki says with a roll of his eyes. "But not actually what I was asking. What business is it of yours where I have dinner? You made it quite clear that you wished to have no say in what I do, and I do what I want."

"Yeah, about that. This may actually come as a revelation to you, being a mass-murdering alien prince and all, but theft and fraud _is_ actually still against the law. I've been tracking the rise of a veritable one-man crime wave in the past few weeks; seems that credit card fraud, con schemes and shoplifting have been on the rise in all the neighborhoods around here." Tony bares his teeth in what could only most charitably be described as a smile, plants his gauntlet on the table and leans forward. "Fraud and fakery, huh? I don't know, somehow just made me think of _you._ Can't imagine why."

"I am trying to have dinner, Stark," Loki growls, nerves pricking up at Tony's infringement into his space (the hypocrisy, the _hypocrisy_ of Tony Stark, that he surrounds himself with every sumptuous luxury that Midgard can provide, that he has never in his life known what it is to go without, but he would deny even the smallest of comforts to _Loki_ who has lost everything, _everything -)_ "What do you want?"

"Oh, yeah, I almost forgot!" Tony feigns self-deprecating clumsiness, then reaches into a pouch hooked to his belt. "I'm here to _give_ you something you left behind at my place."

His left hand lashes out and Loki flinches as a handful of half-rotted vegetable matter spatters across his face; but then he can't help but smile as he recognizes it. It seems _someone_ finally got around to running chemical tests on the remains of the apples Loki had given to him. "Oh, you needn't have gone to such trouble to return my possessions to me. It was a _gift,_ after all," he says sweetly. "I'll be sure to let you know if I come across any other magnificent gifts worthy of your brilliance; I hear there's a bridge over in Brooklyn that's for sale..."

That's as far as he gets before Tony leans forward with a growl, looming over him, and seizes his upper arm in a tight metal grip. It _hurts,_ and all at once Loki flashes back to another place, another set of claw-tipped arms grabbing him, holding him down -

Loki punches him.

It has been some time since Loki fought at full strength, and his is the strength of an Asgardian; the blow knocks Tony across the room, armor or not. Bystanders scream and scramble to get out of the way as the metal armor smashes and crashes its way through tables, carts, and delicate floral arrangements before skidding to a stop against the opposite wall.

But then Tony is up again, his helmet snapping closed as his repulsors fire, bringing him right back at Loki with the force of a steam train. Loki stands up and summons his armor, and the fight is on.

* * *

It is all over the news the next day, the battle between Iron Man and his mysterious magic-wielding nemesis, and it galls Loki even more than his scrapes and bruises that for some unfathomable reason _he_ is being held responsible for the ruin they had made of the restaurant and the two floors above and below it.

He had, perhaps, been the first one to strike a blow, but _Tony_ was the one who initiated the encounter, coming in to harass Loki unasked-for and assaulting him, _putting hands on him._ Tony had smashed as many windows and broken as much furniture as Loki had in the ensuing brawl, and yet the media seems all too ready to pin the blame on him and him alone.

Loki had once thought, foolishly perhaps, that to be a supervillain it was necessary to have some superhuman powers, to commit some extraordinary crime. Instead, it seems that all that is necessary to earn one the designation of a 'supervillain' is to be on some superhero's shit list, for whatever reason.

Over the next few weeks it seems that Loki cannot escape mention of Tony anywhere he goes, everywhere he looks; all the newspaper and television screens seem to have nothing better to display than his smug, self-righteous face. All they can talk about is Stark Industries, Stark Tower, Iron Man, Tony Stark and how Tony Stark is revolutionizing the field of clean energy, how Tony Stark is saving the world.

It _burns._

The heat roiling in Loki's chest seethes, it clamors for an outlet. At times he can hardly think, can hardly see for the red mist that settles upon him. And so he decides on his course of action.

Tony Stark's latest tiresome gala is being held at the Washington convention center, near this kingdom's seat of governance. (A pitiful excuse for a fortress, Loki thinks, and another day he might have taken the time to show the mortals just why it was so unwise to leave your palace so exposed. Another day.) It has something to do with cars, and energy - Loki is not entirely clear on the details, only that it involves Tony dragging out his entire beloved collection of classic cars.

The cars are arranged under a tableau of glittering lights and pumping rock music. Tony himself poses on the stage before them, surrounded by a bevy of glamorous-looking mortal girls (and why should Tony even bother to _look_ at those girls, empty and facile as they are, when he once could have held a god?) and smiling for the cameras.

The first thing Loki does upon his arrival, appearing among the camera crews and sound technicians in a flurry of seith, is to cut the incessant, annoying music. It is replaced with a high-pitched squeal that causes everyone in the room to cry out and cower, clutching at their ears, and Loki smiles to see them bow before him as he strides out onto the stage.

"Oh, Tony," Loki drawls, pitching his voice to be heard over the shocked hubbub of the guests and crewmen. "You were having a party, and you didn't even invite me?"

Tony recovers from his shock quickly, and glowers at his unwanted guest. "Yeah, well, I didn't want to bring down the tone," he sneers. "Besides, I didn't think you'd be interested in the subject matter. Classic cars, not really your thing - about a millenium or two too new-fangled for you, am I right?"

Loki glances around at the array of cars placed under the hot showroom lights, and a smirk touches his features. Because Tony loves those cars, he really does, and Loki knows it. "Oh, I can certainly appreciate the aesthetics," he says, and calls magic to him as he raises his hands. "Why, they look positively... _edible."_

He snaps his fingers, and Tony blinks and jerks his head back as the spark of power issues from Loki's hands and grounds itself in the vehicles.

At first there is no visible change, but under the hot studio lights, it doesn't take long. The sleek, polished surfaces begin to soften, the streamlined edges begin to slump. Tony looks at his prized collection with horror. "My cars," he says. "You turned my cars into -" he touches one, to be sure, and his hand draws back sticky and sweet. "You turned my cars into _ice cream."_

He looks back at Loki and his expression is a study in horror, outrage and just a tiny glint of admiration. "You son of a bitch."

Loki's smirk widens, and he stretches his arms out to the side. "Well?" he challenges. "What do you plan to do about it?" Because Tony must have one of his suits somewhere nearby, Loki is sure of it; he never travels to public events without them. Tony will don his suit, and he and Loki will exchange blows, and glass will shatter, and metal will rend and tear under his hands, and it will feel _so good -_

The only warning comes when the lights rise to sudden brightness above them for a moment, then crackle and fizz their way into darkness. Loki looks about him, puzzled, and the solution is only just dawning on him when a hole tears open in the sky with a roar of thunder, and he is being slammed into the far wall by a hammer blow mighty enough to steal his breath.

"LOKI!"

Loki lies still for a moment, wheezing and trying to collect his scrambled thoughts. He'd forgotten how greatly a hit from Thor could stun - perhaps not as painful as some other attacks Loki has suffered in the past, but never failing to make him feel as though a mountain fell on him. A fine way to greet an estranged sibling, Loki thinks, and is feebly trying to form words to that effect as he manages to sit up in the small crater he's made of the wall and floor.

Another crater is formed to match the first one a moment later when Thor follows up on his first attack, grabbing Loki by the cuffs of his shirt and slamming him back against the wood. Loki sees stars, dancing around the borders of his vision to frame his brother's face. That's Thor all right; big, blond, boisterous, and a number of other adjectives that begin with B. As unchanged and unchanging as the eternal Realm he sprang from. "Thor," he manages to croak, bringing up a hand to pluck at Thor's grasp on his throat. "Don't you think it would be a bit more sporting to wait till I actually _resist_ before you employ such force?"

Thor ignores this, as usual, getting right to the meat of his business. "Loki, your days of villainy are ended!" Thor booms. "I have come to put an end to your schemes!"

"Oh, do tell," Loki says, casually twisting Thor's hand to break his grip and taking a step sideways. "Tell me, then, what _are_ my schemes? I'm all agog to find out."

"I do not know what you plot, but I am certain it must be dire!" Thor exclaims. Loki can't help but wonder if Thor is actually capable of forming a sentence that doesn't end in an exclamation point.

He seems to get his answer a moment later, when some of the confidence seems to drain from Thor's demeanor. "That is," he says a moment later in a much more hesitant tone, "The All-Father was concerned enough to gather the dark energy needed to send me here, so I am certain that he must have reason to worry. He bade me to find out what you were up to, and put an end to it."

Loki's jaw drops open, because really? _Really?_ It's a familiar enough refrain from their childhood; anytime Loki was quiet for too long, he'd hear " _Thor, go find out what your brother is doing and stop him."_ Retold many times over at feasts, it always got a laugh from everyone - except Loki.

But this - this is beyond outrageous now, this is some cosmic _joke_ that the universe is playing on him. For years Thor never came, Thor _never_ came, not when Loki begged the uncaring sky for his help, not even when Loki and his mortal allies struggled to their deaths on the freezing plains of Antarctica, not even for _years_ while Loki lay trapped in the dungeons of the Chitauri - Thor never, ever came. But let him stir one foot out of line on Midgard, and see the God of Thunder come running!

"I severely question your sense of priorities, Odinson," Loki says through his teeth, "if a few vehicles turned to _ice-cream_ warrants your attention."

"Large or small, I cannot allow these trespasses, Loki," Thor rebukes him. "This world is under _my_ protection, and I will not let you torment the innocents here just out of spite for me!"

Loki can't help it, he laughs hysterically; because the alternative would be punching Thor in the face, and he has no desire for a broken hand right now. Midgard under Thor's protection? _Thor's_ protection? Exactly who has been struggling here, for well over two decades, to avert the catastrophe that threatens all life on this pitiful blue rock? "Oh, _Thor_ , he exclaims. "As spoiled and arrogant as you ever were. Whatever gave you the impression that this is all about _you?_ "

Thor scowls at him thunderously. "Do not seek to turn this back on me!" he commands, shoving Loki back against the wall. "You are in no position to talk, hiding on Midgard amongst the oblivious mortals, using the powers of Asgard for your own petty gain and malice. You shame our father's name, our house -"

A hiss escapes Loki's lips and he strikes out with the speed of a snake, a low fast blow under Thor's arms against his gut that makes the larger man _oof_ as he stumbles backwards. For a moment Loki almost wished he had his dagger in his hands, if only because Thor always makes it so _easy_ , leaving his center unguarded. "Odin can go boil himself dry in the fires of Muspelheim for all I care!" he snarls, vitriol rising easily to his lips. "He is _not_ my father and even if he were, he needs no help of mine to bring shame upon his name. He does that well enough all by himself!"

Thor actually falls back a step, eyeing Loki with a new, guarded expression. "I am surprised to hear such things from you, Brother," he says after a moment. "The last time our paths crossed, you were prepared to do anything - aye, even destroy an entire realm - to win his favor. What has changed, Loki?"

"Time has changed," Loki says savagely. "And so have I. I have grown, _Brother_ , in my absence. Speak not to me of Odin All-Father."

"What of Frigga All-Mother, then?" Thor counters unfairly. "Do you care nothing for how this wickedness of yours pains her? When you fell from the Bifrost, she was prostrated with grief -"

The laughter bubbles up out of him again, hoarse and dry and jagged. "Yes because clearly," Loki says, spilling raggedly over Thor's lecture, " _Clearly_ when I recall the day I tried to take my own life, the thing I _should_ be focussing on was how bad it made _other people feel!"_

Thor's expression turns shocked, his voice hurt. "Loki -" he begins.

"Hey, excuse me, can I butt in here?" a new voice chimes in, and Loki turns his head just a fraction to see Tony Stark; apparently he has found a suit of armor somewhere and returned, now hovering a few feet off the ground beside Thor. "So this is a great heart-to-heart you guys are having and all, but two questions: who the hell is this guy, and why the hell is there a giant hole in my roof?"

"Know your place, little mortal," Thor barks out, without even turning to look at Tony. "I am Prince Thor Odinson of Asgard, and I am conversing with my villainous brother. I will handle any further threats, so you need not concern yourselves with the matters of gods."

Loki can't see Tony's expression with his faceplate down, but he knows him well enough that he can easily read the shift in posture, the change in body language. "Oh, a prince, well great, well isn't that special," Tony says, and his voice is flat headed into _pissed off_ territory. "Welcome to Earth, Your Highness. Just a couple of tips that might help you get adjusted here; one, we've invented this newfangled thing called a _door_ you can use, and two -"

Thor is distracted enough to turn around to face Tony with a frown, giving Loki the chance to sidle quietly away. So he just out of the blast zone when Tony turns both his repulsors on Thor, blowing him across the showroom and through a glass partition.

Tony's magnified voice rings out through the entire building as Thor staggers to his feet. "Two, _don't touch my stuff._ "

Thor crashes to his feet with a roar, clutching Mjolnir with furious lightning arcing from its head and blood-red battlerage in his eyes. Tony is more than game for the challenge, blasting himself off across the room to collide head-on with his target like a red-and-gold missile. Thor crashes against a concrete wall, stunned and constrained, but even the little bit of leverage he has free is enough to swing Mjolnir in a tight vicious arc, knocking Tony back.

Loki seats himself on the edge of the stage, elbow resting on his knees and chin propped on his fist, and watches the show. And helps himself to ice-cream.

* * *

Thor stays on Midgard afterwards. Well, he could hardly return to Asgard - the Bifrost remains broken, and unless he can contrive some way of getting Loki to take him via the dark paths, or convince Tony Stark to lend him the Tesseract, he's pretty much stuck.

For all his high-minded talk about putting an end to Loki's villainy, he doesn't actually seem to be trying all that hard. Or maybe Loki is a problem he doesn't know how to fix, one that can't be solved by mighty blows from Mjolnir or condescending lectures on morality and righteousness. Both of those strategies having failed, Thor finds himself at something of a loss. Unless he's prepared to kill Loki he can't contain him for long, and they both know it.

But he doesn't seem to mind. He quickly finds distractions. He falls back in with that Foster woman and her insufferable tagalongs, gets dragged into local metahuman affairs the likes of which Loki remembers only too well from his Avengers days. He's a natural, of course. He takes to it like he takes to all spotlights, and before long he becomes the media's darling; the same rags that lambasted Loki as a "magical menace to life and property" when he smashes up one building are soon cooing over the "noble warrior from tales of legend" when Thor does the same. (Loki was voted "#1 Public Nuisance" in this year's Times list, which simultaneously pleases him for the recognition, and annoys him because 'nuisance' is such a _tame_ word.)

One thing is certain, though; Thor won't be joining the Avengers any time soon. He and Tony Stark still despise each other, and Tony makes no secret of it in every interview he gives. Thor seems good-naturedly immune to Tony's venom, and instead treats Tony with the same treacly, pat-on-the-head condescension he does to all 'normal-strength' mortals. If ever they are in public together their spats are acrimonious and brief.

Loki settles into a routine of his own. When he is bored (when the silence gets to be too much) he entertains himself, finding some corner of this pitiful mortal world to stir up excitement. Like the time he re-enacts King Kong climbing up the Empire State Building, or the time he dropped in on a Senate hearing in Washington and forced all the men and women in attendance to conduct their business in a choreographed song and dance.

At other times - when the bitterness gets to be too much, when the hot red rage building up in his chest rises too high, too full, threatening to burst over him and run down his arms and hands like blood (like blood and hot viscera running down his hands, smearing over his skin, the stink of the hide about him) - he will make an occasion to torment either his ex-lover or his ex-brother, whichever has annoyed him the most this month.

He crashes a date that Thor is on with Jane Foster, the witch of a mortal trying to accustom Thor to Midgard's courting rituals. They are at the zoo, a menagerie of wild and dangerous beasts, and it really is just too easy for Loki to unlock all the cages and drive the animals snarling through the corridors.

Another time, he crashes one of Tony's high-star-power galas, and vanishes the clothes of each and every guest there. The panic and chaos this causes is a boon to Loki's soul, perching on the roof above and watching them all run about like ants, and of course he and Tony get to fight afterwards, and that is the best time of all.

For a few hours Tony's attention will all be on him; all his brilliant mind, his sharp and biting wit, the power leashed and coiled in his armor will be focused on Loki. If he can have Tony Stark no other way, at least Loki can still him as an enemy.

* * *

Time runs together, the days melting into one another marked only by one or another scheme for mischief, looking back or ahead to the next chance he'll have to pummel (or be pummeled by) one of his two nemeses. That is their way, the way of immortals; it only falls to mortals to grind out each hour, each day, each week, each anniversary.

Yet there is one anniversary that Loki cannot bring himself to ignore, ticking down in his mind like a bright red countdown. No matter how many times he tries to tell himself that it is over, it is done, he need concern himself no more... still, a part of him (deep-buried, whimpering, sobbing) counts each minute towards that dire day.

In the last few days leading up to what would have been the invasion of the Chitauri Loki gives up on all his other plans and schemes; he cannot concentrate on any of them. He leaves his affairs aside in a disorganized heap and takes flight to Antarctica.

Sorcerers definitely have some advantages when it comes to camping; no meager hide-tent with a crude windbreak and unappetizing dried travel rations for Loki. With the aid of a few spells, Loki's makeshift campsite leads to a small but luxuriously appointed apartment with adequate heating, ample food, and satellite TV. Not that any of the former see much use: Loki ends up spending most of the next week perched on top of a rugged rocky ridge, staring at the snow-swirled sky, eyes straining for the first flash of blue.

Thor shows up on the fourth day.

With his usual foresight, he appears dressed in no more than his usual armor and cloak, arms and face bare to the wind. Aesir are tougher than mortals on all accounts, but even the mighty Thor is shivering and rubbing at his arms as he trudges up the uneven hillside in the slow.

When he spies Loki, perched at the edge of a rocky outcrop with his green cloak whipping about him, Thor pauses uncertainly, but not for long. The two Asgardians -one true, one false - stare at each other across the snow for a while, before Loki deliberately looks away and returns his gaze to the sky. He has better things to do today than to play with Thor.

Thor is not daunted by Loki's show of unconcern. He hikes the rest of the way up the snowy face and, much to Loki's annoyance, plops down on the ridgetop beside him. "A brisk day, eh, isn't it Loki?" Thor says, forcing cheer into his tone despite the audible chattering of his teeth. "How long have you been out here, anyway? I'm surprised you haven't frozen sol... ah..." He seems to remember the truth a moment too late, and squirms uncomfortably for a moment while Loki ignores him, only to perk up and force a laugh. "But then again, perhaps you would not have reason to complain! Surely this terrain would seem as friendly as a balmy spring day to a Frost Gi..."

"I cannot spare the attention to fight you today, Odinson," Loki interrupts him, when it becomes clear that Thor intends to charge forward with his blunder and babble no matter how Loki disdains him. "I would prefer it if you simply left. But if you cannot manage that, then at least have the grace to remain _silent_."

Much to Loki's surprise, he does. The two of them sit there on the rocky ledge for a long time, the wind whipping stinging particles of sand-fine ice and snow past them. Loki thinks for sure that Thor will give up and leave - the way he is shifting uncomfortably in the snow, wrapping his cloak ineffectively about him, blowing on his fingers to try to breathe life into them shows clearly how miserable he must be - but instead he just sits there, quietly.

At last Loki can bear it no more; he turns away from the silent air and looks at Thor long enough to burst out, "Borr's blood, Thor, what are you doing here? What do you _want?"_

Thor looks back at him solemnly. "I _want_ an end to our quarrels," he says quietly. "I _want_ us to be brothers again, if you would have it. I _want_ you to come home to Asgard, where you belong."

Loki snorts and turns his back on Thor, adjusting his cloak sharply to keep the wind off. "I never belonged in Asgard, Thor," he says, the bitterness that coats his tongue always these days drenching his words. "I will never go back there. I would rather descend to Helheim itself."

Thor shakes his head in frustration, but not in surprise. Well, he ought not to be surprised, given Loki's _repeated, months-long attempts_ to communicate 'NO I WILL NOT GO BACK' in every means short of burning it on his forehead with a brand (backwards, so he'll see it every time he looks in a mirror.) Even Thor can register a truth, it seems, if you beat him over the head with it for long enough. "But why?" he asks. "You have made it plain that you regard Midgard as unworthy of you, as beneath you. Why would you wish to abide here, of all places?"

Loki stands still, staring off into the ice-washed distance with unseeing eyes. Wonder of wonders, first Thor was silent when asked, and now he acts as though he actually cares to hear Loki answer. "On Asgard..." Loki says slowly. "On Asgard, I would forever be constrained by the expectations placed on me. I must either be your shadow, your lesser - the second-best, the failure... or else I am a traitor and a monster in the eyes of all Asgard. Neither options I find particularly appealing. Midgard - Midgard is barbaric, it's true. But at least here, I am free to be who I want to be."

"And is this who you want to be, Loki? Truly?" Thor asks in disbelief. "A bully who uses his strength and magic to harass and torment the innocent and defenseless? A petty tyrant who spends his days spiting others for puerile entertainment? Is that truly the person you wanted to be?"

No. No, it wasn't. "I walked the path I did for a reason, Thor," Loki snarls. "You cannot - you cannot know. I did what I had to do, and you will never understand why. I cannot undo a single step along this road. "

Thor shrugs. "Well, of course not," he says. "No one can change the past, Brother. Not even you, for all your mighty magics."

Loki snorts. How confidently Thor speaks of the inviolability of time - his brother has _no idea_ , none at all.

"But you _can_ change the future," Thor says earnestly, scooting several inches closer to Loki along their icy bench. Loki glowers at him, but does not move further away. "Loki, listen. You asked me - do you remember? - after my return to Asgard, whether it was Jane who had changed me so."

Loki frowns and shakes his head. Did he really say that? It was so long ago, he can no longer remember. Thor presses onwards.

"It is true, but it was not Jane alone who wrought such a change in me. It was this world, and especially it was a wise man named Erik Selvig. He helped teach me that sometimes you have to lose all you have in order to let go of what was holding you back. He taught me that no matter how low I had fallen, I could remake myself, I could rise from the ashes and begin again.

"And if I could do it, then you can do it too, Loki," Thor says, looking Loki square in the eye. "If you like not the place you find yourself, you can always walk forward. You can change, if you wish to. I believe in you."

He says it so _earnestly_ and Loki wants to laugh, to sneer, to spit on the idea that Thor's _belief_ means anything to him. That Thor should know anything about Loki that Loki himself does not know. And yet -

And yet, perhaps there is something to it. Wisdom can be found in the most unlikely of places, after all. A humble pool of water at Yggdrasil's roots. A little blue planet, mundane and backwards compared to the glories of Asgard. A cold white plain of ice at the bottom of the world.

"Perhaps," Loki says slowly. Perhaps he's lost sight of himself, in his endless labor to avert the future that he dreads. Perhaps Thor is right, that he should look to change the present as decisively as he once strove to change the past. "Perhaps..."

The ground quivers.

Loki's eyes fly wide, his gaze jerks upwards, searching the sky above them for the tell-tale flash of blue. No, it cannot be the Chitauri, it _cannot_ be - he killed them all, _he killed them -_

There is nothing in the sky; the snow blows on as it ever has, unceasing and uncaring. No smell of ozone, no crackle of the Tesseract's energy, no glowing light.

"Loki?" Thor says, picking up on his unease. He hefts his hammer and peers about him, searching for whatever threat so alarmed Loki. What is it?"

He shakes his head. Perhaps, Loki tries to convince himself, it was nothing. Just an unrelated, coincidental tremor - they _do_ happen, sometimes, on this young world with its uneasy tectonic heart. Perhaps -

Another tremor. Stronger, this time.

And the ground begins to crack open.

"No," Loki whispers, scrambling to his feet and lunging towards the edge of the cliff, eyes glued to the stir of movement in the distance. It cannot be, it _cannot be,_ there has been no invasion, no battle, no blood, no war - _it cannot be -_

There on the featureless plain of ice, unmarked by any artificial hand or summoning sigil, the ground crumbles and sags open. Ice and stone plunge down into nothingness, and as a terrible movement quickens in the darkness.

Nithhogg comes.

"No!" Loki screams, shooting himself into the air with his magic to get a better vantage point. "No, no, _no!"_ It is impossible, impossible, and yet it is happening before his very eyes, his nightmare made flesh - **_"Why?!"_**

Why this, why now, why is this _happening?_ How can Nithhogg come without a summoning, without an invocation, without the call of his dark master? It is a beast, mindless and thoughtless, knowing nothing more than the dark sucking void of its own hunger and hate for all things living, and for all Loki could do he could not stop it.

_Why?_ Why now - after everything Loki has done, after everything that _has been done_ to him, after all the pain he's inflicted and all he's endured, all the lies, all the careful plans, all the death and battle and blood and despair, _why,_ after all Loki has fought and clawed and scraped and mortgaged his strength and his magic and his heart and his soul to stop this -

And still Nithhogg comes.

Still it comes, the ground churning away in a widening pit, the stinking air of the horror beyond death rolling out to strike them where they stand. Thor sees it now too, he could hardly ignore it, and he gapes with shock at the terrible emergence of that many-faceted head, that jagged gaping maw shining with dire light. "Loki!" he calls out, his face pale beneath its golden tan. "Is this one of your plots?"

The sheer _rage_ that statement inspires breaks him free of the horror of paralysis that had gripped him, and Loki drops on his brother to grab him by the shoulders. "You utter _imbecile,_ " he snarls, shaking Thor as if he could shake some sense into him. "This is everything I was _trying to stop!"_

And fool of all fools, Thor actually looks _relieved,_ as though he'd rather face the end of all things than some petty yet harmless prank of Loki's. "Then we will stop it together," he declares, and raises Mjolnir.

_What?_ "Thor, _no!"_ Loki grabs Thor's arm, hauling him back and away from the rocky edge. "This is not something that you can _fight,_ Thor! It is an abomination from the end of the universe - you _can not_ _fight it!"_

Thor laughs, he _laughs_ as though Loki has just made some great jest; raises one arm and shrugs off Loki's hand even as he raises Mjolnir high. Stormclouds rumble overhead as Thor calls his thunder, and in the stark flash of a lightning flash he is grinning. "Have a little faith in me, Brother," he says, and then he is turning away.

" _Thor!"_ Loki screams at him, his voice almost lost in the clash of thunder and the shuddering noise of disintegrating rock. "You will _die,_ Thor, do you understand? Mother has seen it - it was her _prophecy,_ that if you should fight against Nithhogg you are doomed to die, you know that Mother is never wrong - Thor, _listen to me!"_

Thor doesn't listen, of course.

He never has.

And now the red-caped fool is bounding away across the plain, swirling his hammer as he goes, and Loki follows him for two steps before he collapses to the ground, his knees failing beneath him. He can't follow Thor on this - he can't get any closer to that horror, he _can't._

There is no Thanos, no Chitauri and no invasion, but then there doesn't have to be. Nithhogg alone will be enough to destroy this world, and with it the rest of the Tree will fall. All of Loki's clever schemes of misdirection, his wit and magic and cunning, came to nothing in the end, _nothing._

It's strange - things are beginning to break apart at the edges, cracks and fragments in his vision, and through them Loki can hear and see the sweet whispers of the Void. Strange because Loki knows where all the entrances are to the Void, knows where they are and where they are not. They form at the edges of things, in rifts and holes and broken things - broken minds and broken dreams, where the laws of reason give way to madness. Strange, it is almost as though a new one is forming beneath his very feet.

Nithhogg turns, ponderous and inevitable, as though testing the air. Seeking blindly, a hound scenting for a trace, the very trail he'd followed into the world, until he stops in place and his eyeless gaze fixes on -

On Loki.

When he first entered this world Nithhogg was the size around of a small truck; now he's of a height of the nearby foothills, deep and wide as a canyon, and growing with every second. Against his scale Thor's fluttering red cloak is a speck, a child's toy, trailing lightning as he goes. Lightning crashes down but Nithhogg doesn't even seem to notice it; the bright light that arcs and shudders through his veins is far more potent. Thor strikes at the great wyrm's side with all his mighty strength, and Nithhogg doesn't even feel it.

Still Thor does not retreat, he never shall. Heedless of the tiny flyspeck by his head, Nithhogg surges forward, still fixed on Loki. It doesn't even seem to notice that Thor stands between them. The great wyrm opens his mandibles, and -

Loki screams when he feels his brother die, snuffed out of the world as though he had never been.

He's still screaming when the Void takes him.


	7. The Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Loki starts again.

 

In the silence of the Void, dark, warm like a womb, Loki realizes what he had fought so hard for so long not to see:  it is _him,_ it is _him,_  it is because of _him_  that the wyrm comes.  Nithhogg has his scent. Nithhogg hunts. Nithhogg is a creature outside the delicate webwork of space and time, as is he; _of course_  it is not thrown off his trail by the mere turning back of a few years.  It does not matter that the invasion has been stopped, the summoning averted; it no longer needs a summon. It now _never needed_ to be summoned, for it has his scent and it will never, ever stop chasing him. He knows this, and he screams his rage and despair into the soundless void. 

They were right, Tony and the Midgardian fools, they were right about him and they didn't even know why. He _is_  a villain, he _is_  a monster,  not because of any petty thefts or careless destruction but because of _this:_  he and Nithhogg are two sides of the same coin, their fates inextricably intertwined. He was always doomed to come to this, and Nidhogg was always, always meant to be that doom. 

In time, though, the screams transmute into laughter. It is all a joke, it is the universe's cruelest joke and _he_  is the punchline. To think he had thought himself unfettered. To think he had imagined himself free. (it's a lie it's a lie it was always a lie) To think he had ever dreamed that he would be victorious! He was doomed to fail before he even began, from the moment his foot first touched the void twenty years ago 

(two years, a hundred years, what does it matter?)

 

he was fated to this, THIS, this _end._  

A storm churns inside his own head, all his carefully laid plans and steps disintegrating in his hands and scattering like flotsam in a whirlwind. Go to the Chitauri homeworld (and then) win Thanos' trust it won't be hard he just has to kill enough people until Thanos is pleased that won't be hard at all (and then) go to Midgard (and then) steal the Tesseract from its housing take Selvig take Tony take anyone who can build for him (and then) hide, run, hide until the Avengers come for him until Thor comes -- _he will not come he never comes_ \-- he will come (and then) someone will have to die they won't fight together unless someone dies he hopes it won't be someone he likes (and then) open the portal bring in the Chitauri somewhere _warm_ somewhere _close_  somewhere the Avengers can get there in time and fight and win and and and

 

(and tHen)

 

the Chitauri must die all of them must die they must all die (and then he will) Thanos must be intrigued he must be drawn out he must leave his defenses and come to Midgard (and then he will) the heroes must defeat him he must die too and then (and then he will) leave run hide find some crevice some barren moon (and then he will) _die_  and then he'll have to _die_ and then he must _die_ he must _die_ he must ** _die_**

 

It's a good plan, he thinks.

 

(what could possibly go wRoNG?)

 

 _But you swore,_ a faint little voice says in the back of his mind, the bottom of his heart. _You swore you would not cause your mother to mourn._

Well, that's all been taken care of hasn't it, because this was never the story of his becoming a hero, this was never ever about him becoming a hero, this was the story of how he became a monster, and the fates have shaped him -- inch by inch, year by year -- into a creature which no one would ever have cause to mourn. 

No one will mourn him. No one will miss him. No one. He is sure of it, he will _make_  sure of it, he will be cruel and he will be cold and they and Tony and Jan and Clint and Steve and Thor and they and Father and they and Mother they will not mourn no they will not mourn when he is no more because he will _make_ them forget he was ever _ever **loved**_

 

(they've aLReady forgOTTen.)

 

And as he steps into the portal that will take him to the shattered world, he smiles.

* * *

-the end.


	8. Author's Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Everything You Didn't Want to Know about the making of "Rise From Ash."**

 

  * LOKI'S JOURNEY:



 To start with, I apologize to my readers for the downer ending. This wasn't a last-minute decision; this fic was always meant to end this way.  In the same way that "Slow Poison" was meant as a lead-in to _Thor_ and "A Villain State of Mind" was written to lead into _Thor 2,_ "Rise From Ash" was written to lead into _Avengers_.

The discrepancy between Loki's character in _Thor_ and his character in _The Avengers_ has bothered me ever since I saw both movies. While there are obvious out-universe reasons for the disconnect, I still felt a need to find a way to reconcile the two in-universe. VSoM did this to a certain extent, but necessitated bringing in brainwashing and/or memory alteration. In other words, rather than showing how the Loki of _Avengers_ came about, it simply insisted that he wasn't the real Loki. And that didn't really answer the question. 

The fact that Loki's changed behavior is explained as a result of _insanity_ always bothered me. If Loki is really mentally ill he needs treatment, not punishment; but instead, 'insane' is used as synonymous with 'evil, but stupid about it.' I do not like how Hollywood treats mental instability, especially not as it is essentially used as a get-out-of-character-free card to excuse behavior that is both inconsistent and logically inexplicable. Leaving aside the danger of stigmatization of genuinely mentally ill people -- who are far more likely to be   _in_  danger, both from themselves and from others, than to be a danger others -- there is no recognized cognitive disorder that could possibly produce the irrationality and change of personality that we see in the Loki of _Avengers_. 

One quote from Joss Whedon regarding Loki's character in _Avengers_ claims that when falling through space, he "saw things" that drove him crazy. This Lovecraftian explanation, while certainly a classic tradition, has never sat well with me. It's not seeing things that drives people mad. It's living them. 

So I set out to design a context in which Loki's actions would make sense. I wanted to give him a motivation that would drive him to any lengths to achieve his goal while being fundamentally incapable of expressing those motivations to anyone around him. I wanted him to be alone, completely cut off from the support of friends or family who could have helped him deal with these events in a reasonable manner; I wanted him to feel that he could trust no one, and that he had been betrayed by everyone. I wanted him to be witness to enough trauma to completely desensitize his normal human reactions to atrocity, and to be hit with enough repeated stress for long enough that he has zero emotional resilience and cannot respond rationally to adversity. I wanted to force him to commit unspeakable acts with his own hands and still feel no remorse for it, because he has fundamentally disconnected from the idea that his actions have consequences, and because he honestly believes that the alternative is worse. Then, I thought, at the end of this path, we finally have a character who looks like the Loki from Avengers. 

This story was never about how Loki is innocent. This story is about how Loki went mad. 

Perhaps this really happened, in the interim between Loki's fall and his re-emergence. Perhaps it didn't; perhaps it was all just a dream, a hallucination that Loki's seizing mind conjured in the Void. Perhaps it really was just something he 'saw.' 

But to Loki, it was real. And that's all that matters.

 

  * RISE FROM ASH: 



The title is a play on words, of course. It refers to Loki rebuilding from the ashes of his old life and the world being reborn from immolation.  The obvious symbolism is the phoenix, which comes back to life again from the fire, the same way Loki is able to return to his starting point and try again no matter how utterly final his defeat seems. 

But "ash" in this title also refers to Yggdrasil itself, the World Tree, which is more specifically an _ash tree._  Yggdrasil is, in a sense, the only consistent character throughout all the timelines apart from Loki himself. From Yggdrasil, Loki rises.

 

  * NITHHOGG: 



For those of you not acquainted with some of the more obscure parts of Norse mythology, Nithhogg (aka Níðhöggr) is mentioned in the Poetic and Prose Eddas, in the following stanza:

From below the dragon  
dark comes forth,  
Níðhöggr flying from Nithafjoll;  
There Níðhöggr sucked  
the blood of the slain,  
The serpent bright:  
but now must I fall.

The etymology of his name is uncertain; it's usually translated as "Hateful Striker." The -höggr ending definitely means "striker," but the first part is more ambiguous. In this setting, I've chosen to read it the same way as "nith" from _nithing,_ a Norse concept you may or may not have encountered in the rest of the Thor fandom, which is somewhat difficult to translate but carries unpleasant connotations of nothingness and unpersonhood. Thus in this rendering, his name translates to "nothing-striker" or the less pedantic "The Unmaker."

Normally when anglicizing the _ð_ character I do so as 'dh,' but in this case I chose to translate it as 'th,' thus words such as _sei _ðr, Níðhöggr__ and _ _I _ðun___  became "Nithhogg," "seith," and "Ithunn." I suppose I could have gone all the way and spelled Oðin's name as _Othinn,_ but I think at that point I'd be sacrificing readability for the sake of pedantry.

At any rate, in this setting, Nithhogg is a polydimensional cosmic being who resides beyond the event horizon of a black hole, devouring matter that gets sucked into said black hole and returning it to another dimensional plane as pure energy. It's kind of difficult to measure his full size, since only part of him can be in a three-dimensional plane at a time; the more of himself he moves into this plane, the bigger he gets, but he's not actually  _changing_  size, per se. ([This image](http://plus.maths.org/issue51/features/buckley/sphere2.jpg) might be a somewhat helpful illustration.) At full extension, Nithhogg would be about the length between Earth and Mars. He's also extremely difficult to inflict damage on, again because only part of his true body is in this plane at a time. If one were to attempt to actually sit down and hit him (as Thor did,) he would appear to our eyes to immediately heal, as the damaged parts of his body passed out of our plane to be replaced by undamaged ones. All of this makes him, as Loki learned, effectively unstoppable and unkillable by any means normally available to man.

He is fated to emerge into _our_   part of universe at Ragnarok, essentially performing a janitorial duty by cleaning up all the dead bodies and detritus before moving on. Odin's ascription of 'malice' to his hunger is really mostly human/Aesir projection; Nithhogg isn't really intelligent enough to even recognize that other beings in the universe exist, let alone feel something as complex as hate for them.

So he's not really _evil_ in the way that we mere mortals would understand it, although that's not much of a comfort when our planet has been reduced to a cloud of radioactive dust floating in a dead solar system.

 

  * POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS AND LOKI:



Astute readers might or might not have identified Loki's persistent trauma, in the second loop and again in the fifth, as PTSD. The flashbacks, fits of uncontrollable temper and weeping, nervousness and inability to focus are all classic PTSD symptoms, and they all contributed to Odin (and others) coming to the conclusion that Loki was insane. They were right, in a way; he IS damaged, it's just that his memories of the apocalypse were the cause of the damage, not figments he invented as a result of insanity. Watching the world end and everyone you love die is _extremely traumatic._

I fully intended for Loki to be experiencing PTSD in the second loop after witnessing the end of the world, but what may have been less obvious is that it actually stayed with him throughout the rest of the story. The symptoms receded somewhat when Loki was placed in a stable and supportive environment surrounded by people who care about him, like in the Avengers loop, but they never fully went away. He was also able to manage them better when he was given a feeling of control over the traumatic events -- that is to say, when he thought he actually had a plan or course of action that would change things. Once he lost that, he lost all ability to cope.

Less well-known [symptoms of PTSD](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTSD#Diagnostic_and_Statistical_Manual) include recurrent nightmares (like the ones he mentions in the third loop with the Avengers;) avoidance of people associated with the traumatic event (like his reluctance to talk to Tony in the third loop;) decreased capacity or even inability to experience certain feelings as well as social withdrawal (like his emotional numbing and refusal to interact with anyone in the fourth loop;) outbursts of irrational anger or violence (like the ones that earn him supervillain status in the fifth loop;) and finally, "an expectation that one's future will be somehow constrained in ways not normal to other people" (like his irrational conviction in the final chapter that he is fated to die to stop Nithhogg's coming.) About the only classic PTSD symptom that Loki DOESN'T display over the course of this story is partial or complete amnesia (like his insistence to Thor that he 'threw him into an abyss' perhaps?)

Yeah, Loki needs help. And sadly, he's not going to get it anytime soon.

 

  * CHAPTER HEADERS:



Each chapter describes a further step of Loki's journey into madness and supervillainhood. It is the reverse of the hero's journey; where the hero would normally be learning important lessons about what it means to be a hero, Loki is learning through repeated failures that the hero's path is futile.

Each chapter header describes one heroic virtue that is stripped from Loki in that chapter; one virtue that he tries to fulfill in the events of that loop, and then at the end of it discards as worthless.  The second loop teaches him the futility of honesty; the third teaches him the futility of working as a team; the fourth teaches him the futility of physical courage; and the final chapter teaches him the futility of hope.

It's possible that another character making the same journey as Loki would take the opposite lessons from it. As Loki himself repeatedly points out through the story, he is not a hero. But then again, perhaps a hero wouldn't be able to do what's required to save the universe.

 

  * HOW MANY YEARS?



The short answer -- About twenty-five.

The long answer -- From the start of this fic I've tried to avoid being nailed down into a solid timeframe, partly in order to avoid trapping myself in a corner -- although I didn't entirely succeed at that, since even the very few solid timeframe references I did give (like Loki's "has it really been three years?" in the third loop) are probably incorrect.

In regards to the timeframe I was trying to fulfill several, probably mutually exclusive criteria. The primary one was that this fic was inspired by/written for an Avengers kinkmeme prompt where Loki was a time traveler, and the prompt explicitly stated that this was the reason for Loki looking so much older in Avengers than he did at the end of Thor. In order for enough time to have passed for Loki -- an immortal -- to have visibly aged, either Loki had to go through a LOT of loops or each loop had to be very long.

I only wanted to do five complete loops, in order to fulfill the "Five times Loki didn't save the world" structure, and I had originally planned for each loop to be only two years (in other words, precisely the time difference between Thor and Avengers.) That would mean a total elapsed time of only ten years, not really enough to showcase Loki's visibly increased age. So, I ended up saying "fuck that" to the original two-years timeframe and gave each loop 3-5 years (with a few exceptions.) My reasoning is thus that in the Avengers loop, Loki kick-started the invasion early, in order to get the Chitauri out of the way.

There were also several partial loops interspersed with the main ones -- I only count a full loop as being one that starts with Loki's fall and ends with Nithhogg emerging on Earth. Loops that he short-circuited before that point by returning to the Void early are considered incomplete.

 

All that being said, here's the final version of the timeline I was working with:

 **Loop 1** \- Loki falls to Earth. He spends one year acclimatizing and three with Tony, before the first invasion. **Total time spent: four years.** Four years is now the baseline time between Loki's fall and Nithhogg's appearance, with the subsequent destruction of the world.

 **Loop 2** \- Loki returns to Asgard, six months after his original fall. He spends about six months on Asgard, which amounts to two years and ten months on Earth (remember, a consistent premise of my Thor fic is that time passes faster on Earth than on Asgard.)  He then returns to Earth, where he spends eight months in SHIELD custody. **Total subjective time spent: three and a half years. Time elapsed: ~7 years.**

-Several incomplete loops here, while Loki practices his ability to reset time-

 **Loop 3** \- Loki returns to Earth one year after his original fall, and spends three years with the Avengers. **Total time spent: three years. Time spent to date: ~ 10 years.**

-At least one more incomplete loop here while Loki searches for Jan-

 **Loop 4** \- Loki returns to Earth minutes after his original fall, then takes the Tesseract to the Chitauri homeworld. Thanks to the additional power of the Tesseract and the intelligence extracted from Loki, Thanos is able to advance his timetable and move on Earth after only two years (compared to the original four.) Loki then remains with the Chitauri for an unspecified period of time (actually between five and eight years) before escaping. **Total time spent: 7-10 years, time spent to date: 17-20 years.**

-Possible incomplete loops here while Loki heals up from loop 4-

 **Loop 5** \- Loki returns to Earth one year after his original fall in order to meet Tony on time. He spends two years constructing a Bifrost, then one year as a supervillain. Total time spent: **3 years, time spent to date: 20-23 years.**

 **Loop 6** \- Avengers canon timeline. Loki returns to the Chitauri homeworld shortly after his original fall, spends two years working his way into Thanos' confidence, then leads the assault on Earth 2 years after the original fall (in other words, the timeframe between Thor and Avengers.) Loki deliberately jump-started the invasion early in order to 1) cut down on the Chitauri's preparation time and 2) give himself plenty of time to wipe out the Chitauri, deal with Thanos, and take himself off to some barren moon to die before Nithhogg is scheduled to come through.  **Total time between end of Thor and beginning of Avengers: 22-25 years.**

 

So it's been just about a quarter-century since Loki's original fall; while that shouldn't really be enough to visibly age an immortal, the stress and torture he's been through in the interim certainly would. Hopefully that didn't just add to the confusion...

  


  * WHAT HAPPENED TO JAN?



I left it somewhat open to interpretation why Jan disappeared at the end of the third loop. The more benevolent explanation is the one Loki himself clung to, that she simply reset to her normal place in the timeline like any other object he displaced, and the only reason he couldn't find her afterwards was because he wasn't looking in the right place. The other possibility is that in his attempt to save her, Loki instead accidentally negated her existence.

The only reason that Loki can exist in the same time period repeatedly is that when he fell into the Void in the first place, it took him outside of space-time and created a 'break point' for his personal timeline. He can't go back in time BEFORE that point, because if he changed the events leading up to his fall he would never have fallen, thus creating a paradox.

Once he exited time-space for the first time, he basically exists in a state of quantum uncertainty. All subsequent visits to the void actually all happen at the same time, since there is no time. That he entered the void was a certainty, but exactly when (or if) he left it was only a possibility. Each time he returns to the Void, the possibilities collapse, the universe negates that timeline back to the 'break point' and he starts over.

But it's not the same for Jan. She never went into the Void by herself, so there is no starting point for her personal loop. There's no point after which the universe could say "All right, she's not here any more, so there's room for another Jan to come in." (She could have come back into the world at any point AFTER jumping into the void with Loki, but of course, the world was destroyed so there'd be nothing to go back to.)  When Loki tried to bring them both back onto Earth during a timeframe where Jan already existed, it set up a paradox, which the universe solved by negating her ENTIRE timeline.

And because she never existed, without her financial, emotional and intellectual support, Hank Pym never became a hero. In a way, this was my headcanon for explaining why she and Hank didn't appear in the first Avengers movie, despite being founding members in the comics.

 

  * AVENGERS LINEUP:



 Chapter 3 of this story nearly caused me more anguish than all the other chapters put together. Among other things, I agonized over the lineup of the "Failvengers," as they were uncharitably referred to by me and Bottan. Since the point of this loop was for the Avengers to be too weak to stem the invasion -- in order to force Loki to pull together a more firepower-heavy cast of "Earth's Mightiest Heroes" in the true Avengers loop -- that meant that Thor, Hulk and Iron Man had to be off the team.

Natasha was originally on the team in loop 3, but I excluded her for three reasons: 1) she was most likely to notice that Loki was not the hero he pretended to be; 2) as an infiltration and interrogation expert, her presence on a brute-force response squad didn't make much sense to me even in the film, and 3) having her replace Clint as Selvig's bodyguard worked better. Her death gave Clint a chance to angst, and brought home the unpleasant truth to Loki that even if he changes the details of events, he can't change the outcome.  With only 2 of the original 6 Avengers left (Steve and Clint,) I had to find replacements for the rest of them.

Hank and Janet Pym, as founding members of the team from the comics, were an obvious choice for replacements. Hank served to fill the role of both the big muscle (Hulk) and team scientist (Bruce and Tony.) Janet provided the replacement "rich sponsor" (Tony) and gave them a place to stay. Loki, of course, fills in for Thor as the resident alien viking.

But that still left them a team of only five to the Avengers' six, and the empty space nagged at me. Since Loki was explicitly gathering as many heroes as he could find, why would he stop at five? I went and reviewed the entire cast of anyone who's ever been a member of the Avengers (did you know Wolverine was once an Avenger? Neither did I!) In the end, the choice came down to either T'challa/Black Panther, about whom I know almost nothing, or Spider-Man, who only joined the Avengers roster very recently. In discussing this choice, Bottan (yes, her again!) happened to offhandedly mention "black Spidey" in reference to his Venom costume. That reminded me that there was in fact a black (African-American) Spider-man in the Ultimates comicverse, Miles Morales. The chance to include him on the team  -- and in doing so, play a little trick on all of my readers who were expecting Peter Parker -- became too good to pass up. (Let's face it: having Jan, Clint, Peter AND Loki all on one team would just be way too much snark for the timeline to handle.)

 

  * CREDITS AND INFLUENCES:



This story, like all timeloop stories, owes its form to a certain extent to "Groundhog Day." But a more immediate influence for this fic was the story of Homura Akemi from _Puella Magi Madoka Magica_. If you aren't familiar with the story, a very abridged version is that a magical girl repeatedly travels back in time in order to try to save one beloved person from destruction, with each repetition worsening the consequences of her fate. She becomes trapped in a feedback loop where the karmic weight of her actions means she cannot succeed, but to turn aside from her path would cause the (literal) destruction of the world. I referenced _Puella Magi Madoka Magica_  a few times through this fic, particularly in the final loop with the references to cake and the mantra "I have no reason to feel despair."

  
  
Art by Bottan.  


The influence of _Puella Magi Madoka Magica_ is also why the story seemed to end so abruptly, as I'm sure many readers (and myself, when I approached the last chapter) felt dissatisfied by it. Even taking into account the events of _The Avengers,_ the plot isn't fixed -- Nithhogg and Thanos are both still out there. But the reason it ended where it did is because the story was about Loki, not about them, and this was the ending of Loki.

In _Puella Magi Madoka Magica,_ magical girls fight against monsters called witches, in much the way that superheroes fight against supervillains in the MCU. What nobody realizes until it's too late is that when a Magical Girl loses hope and succumbs to despair, she _becomes_ a witch. She becomes the very thing she was fighting against -- and once that happens, there's no going back. Ever. She'll stay a witch until another magical girl kills her. And so that's what became of Loki; he fell into despair and became a villain, and no matter what happens after the events of _The Avengers,_ there's no coming back (barring a miracle.) The story ended where it did because it was the end of Loki-the-magical-girl and the beginning of Loki-the-witch.

That said, the DIRECT inspiration for this story -- as well as being the font of all the good ideas within it and the only reason it ever saw the light of day -- is my lovely friend, Bottan. Bottan wrote an incredible entry for the "Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles Fanfic Olympics" earlier this year, which involved one of the characters looping back in time to try to prevent the end of the world. The emotional arc of the story was riveting enough that I was immediately inspired to write a version in the MCU fandom for Loki.

In the original draft of the script, the revelation that drives Loki over the edge in the final chapter was the realization that he cannot succeed against the Nithhogg without enlisting the aid of Thor. But he knows that by doing so, he will be sentencing his brother to death, and the grief of that made him snap. But something about that seemed weak and unconvincing to me.

It was Bottan's suggestion that Loki's realization should instead be something about _himself_ , and I immediately realized that the epiphany that Nithhogg's coming _is **his fault**_  would be a much stronger, more personal, and more hard-hitting revelation. So I came up with the idea of Loki realizing that Nithhogg was tracking him and that it was because of him that the Destroyer can appear in the world even unsummoned, and that the world can be saved only by completing his own suicide.

Incidentally, Loki is wrong about this. Some of you may have noticed that he jumped to this conclusion on rather scanty evidence; Nithhogg did not appear to be targeting him specifically, not in the original nor in any other timeline. And so, as in the original draft of the script, the true reason Nithhogg can appear unsummoned is that he is a creature outside of normal time and space. He _has_  been summoned, successfully, enough times that it has left an 'echo' of a path carved through time and space to Nithhogg's prison, similar to Loki's echo in the void. Resetting the timeline does not erase that echo any more than it erases Loki's memories. Even if Loki dies, Nithhogg will continue to appear, which means that the rest of the cast of Avengers had better wise up to what's actually going on pretty soon, because once Loki's gone, they don't get any more do-overs.

The reason Loki jumped to the conclusion he did about Nithhogg being tied to _him_  is that he would rather seize on the one chance that he   _can_  change things -- even if the only way to do so is with his own death -- than to accept the possibility that he is truly helpless.  Loki's not making terribly rational decisions by this point, as you may have noticed.

  


Now, as a reward for sitting through all those talky author's notes, have a super-exclusive post-credits-bonus sneak-peek stinger scene!

  


So, it probably isn't the best idea in the world to wear sunglasses indoors to an installation run by and chock full of professional paranoids. On the other hand, he's Tony Stark so who gives a fuck? Not Tony Stark. No fucks given here.

Besides, he needs the shades to battle what he likes to refer to as a "science hangover." It's a synergistic combination of sleep deprivation, sugar crash, caffeine toxicity, and profound existential uncertainty which all adds up to a very low tolerance right now for sunlight, loud alarms, or stupidity. Hence the sunglasses and the don't-fuck-with-me-kiddo expression, both of which he's wearing right now as he approaches the guard station.

The young SHIELD officer standing by the door  first gives him a stern glare, quickly followed by a double-take and chased off his face with a look of deep worry. "Uh, excuse me, sir, you can't pass this checkpoint," he says quickly as Tony approaches him without any sign of slowing down. "We're not allowing anyone in to see this prisoner."

Tony sighs, and flips his sunglasses down to give the kid a level look. "First off, I'm not anyone, I'm Tony Stark," he says. "Three quarters of the equipment you're wearing right now was cribbed off my designs. If you and your coworkers are alive today it is probably because of something that I made. Furthermore, not sure if you'd heard this about me, but I'm   _kind_  of not a big proponent of torture, or of prisoners, mistreatment thereof.

"Secondly, I'm also I'm Iron Man. I'm one of the guys responsible for cleaning up the alien army that this guy let in, and you can be damn sure that he wouldn't be in here in the first place if not for me. I   _personally_  tazed this guy in the head after he threw me off a building. So whatever it is that your bosses are afraid someone might do in that cell, I can promise you I won't. I just want to talk to the guy."

The guard wavers, and Tony keeps up the steady stare-pressure. After a moment, the guard waves Tony forward, hallelujah! "You've got fifteen minutes," he says. "And everything you say will be recorded."

"Fine by me," Tony says, and it really is. He just has to see him in the flesh, and as the highly pressurized door slides open and allows Tony a full view of the room, he does.

The Other Guy really did a number on Loki, is Tony's first thought as he steps forward into the cell. His hands are encased in heavy titanium-alloy cuffs in front of him, and those shackled to the bench, but Tony doubts that would slow him down as much as the sheer exhaustion that shows on his bruised and battered face. His head is leaning back against the metal wall, eyes closed, and he doesn't bother to open them when Tony comes in.

"Hi there, Brain," Tony says. He knows that the alien-cum-viking isn't going to get his cultural references, and he doesn't really care. "So I hear you're on your way to Asgard in a few days. I just thought I'd stop by and have a little chat before you go."

There's no response; Loki doesn't even bother to open his eyes. He could almost be asleep for all Tony can tell.

"Now here's a funny thing," Tony says, casual and conversational. "Here on Earth we're not very used to getting alien visitors.  Speaking as a hero of course it's bad, very bad. But speaking as a geek it's an incredible opportunity. There's so much we can learn by studying you guys. Of course, it's kind of rude to up and start scanning your allies without their consent. But hey, here we conveniently have an alien prisoner, so we kind of owe it to science to take readings up down and sideways."

He pauses to look expectantly at Loki, who doesn't bat an eye. Tony shrugs, and keeps talking. "Now among the tests we conducted on your royal self, was a background radiation spectrograph. Personally, I didn't expect much to come of it, at least not yet. God only knows where you've been after all. The best I figured we could hope for is to take some baselines, and then if we ever run into anything like it again, we'd have two points of data to draw from. So who would have thought that when we ran the numbers, one of the very first things to come up was this?"

The opposite wall is nice and blank, so Tony draws a light pen out of his sleeve and points it. A projection springs up across the wall, blue and red and green stripes marching across the white canvas. "That my friend, is a spectrograph of your background radiation levels," Tony says, although Loki still isn't bothering to look. "And what should I find in here but signature arc reactor radiation. Frankly, that blew my mind. And it's not just a vague similarity, like the Tesseract or Thor's giant hammer gives off. No, this is   _exactly_  the same frequency, same harmonics and all. There is radiation in your alien tush that came from an arc reactor. And not just any arc reactor --   _my_  arc reactor, the miniaturized ones with the vibranium core."

Despite his effort to stay casual, tension is creeping up his spine, winding tighter and tighter around his arms. He begins to pace, in an effort to shake it loose. "Well, now, that's creepy enough to begin with, but that's not all. You see, it's not just weird enough that there are only a few arc reactors in the world -- that there have only ever been a handful of the generation two vibranium-core reactors produced and I know where each and every one of them are. I checked. No, what's really creepy about this is the   _age_  of those isotopes.

"I don't know how much you know about radioactive decay, Mr. Ring Cycle, but there's one thing that's constant the world over: radioactive isotopes decay at a predictable rate. It can't be stopped or slowed or faked, it's the tick of the universe. So imagine my surprise when I did a regressive calculation on your radiation levels, and found out that not only were you exposed to arc reactor radiation at some point in the past, but that 'some point' in the past was more than   _twenty years ago._  Which is not only eighteen years before you guys showed up on Earth the first time, but actually sixteen years before the first vibranium-core arc reactor was even invented."

He stops in his pacing, wheels around to face Loki dead-on. "You aren't from this time at all, are you?"

It's incredible, unbelievable, impossible. But the laws of physics don't lie, they're the one thing that Tony has always been able to rely on in this unreliable world. And having faced six other impossible things before breakfast -- viking gods, alien spaceships, wormholes into the deepest reaches of eldritch space -- what was time travel to throw in the mix?

And Loki reacts at last; opens his eyes and   _smiles_  at Tony, fierce and hard and desolate. "Very clever, Tony Stark," he says, his voice as dry as a wasteland. "But then, you always were."

 

(This scene was actually the first one ever scripted for this fic concept. My original plan was to start with this, then have Loki retelling everything that happened beforehand during an interview with SHIELD. Fortunately, Bottan was there to whack me on the head and make me do it properly, not half-assed, if I was going to do it at all!)

And that's all for now, folks!


End file.
